"It'll work," Zitka said. They'll accept that."

They'll have to, or it's no game, Zit. And they'll have to understand they'll be playing long odds— mighty long odds. It will be a death game, Zit."

That's the only kind would be worthwhile for the kind of guys I'm thinking of." He showed Bolan a faint smile. "I been playing the death game most of my adult life. Haven't you?"

Bolan nodded curtly. "The name of the game will be Hit the Mafia. Well hit them so fast, so often, and from so many directions they'll think hell fell in on them. We steal 'em blind, see. We kill and we terrorize and we take every goddamned thing they have—and then we'll see how powerful and well organized they are."

Zitka shot his friend an appraising stare. A nerve ticked in his cheek, and a small thrill chased down his spine. It seemed ridiculous, but he felt a flicker of pity for the Mafia. He had worked with The Executioner before, many times, in the jungles of Vietnam. Now the jungles were moving to Mafialand.

"Well, what do you say?" Bolan asked tersely.

"I say, on to the games, James," Zitka replied quietly. "Turn this bomb around. I'll show you how to get to Laurel Canyon."

Bolan swung into a roadside park and back onto the highway, reversing his direction. His foot grew heavy on the accelerator. The game is on," he murmured.

Bill (Boom-Boom) Hoffower, the demolitions expert, was pulled away from a five-day drunk, sobered up, and recruited with a two-minute pitch. The twenty-six-year-old ex-Quaker from Pennsylvania, a blond and blue-eyed six footer, found the proposition immediately intriguing. He had only slightly known Bolan in Vietnam and had heard nothing whatever of The Executioner's recent exploits in the East. The Mafia he had always regarded as an American fantasy ("You telling me there really is a Mafia?"). His decision to join the death squad had nothing to do with friendship or idealism. Until recently he had been employed by an oil company in offshore drilling operations. He had deserted the job shortly after his wife deserted him and had not worked "for a couple of months."

Hoffower demonstrated to Bolan his expertise with explosives by "disarming" his own home. The mortgage people are coming out Tuesday to take it back," he confided. "I got it rigged to blow it up in their goddamn faces."

Bolan was impressed with Hoffower's knowhow and was, of course, cognizant of the demolition expert's Vietnam reputation. Not only did he possess a golden touch with explosives, but he had also proved himself as a coolly capable combat infantryman. Hoffower was left sober, a thousand dollars wealthier, and with "forty-hours, delay in reporting" to settle his personal affairs.

Tom (Bloodbrother) Loudelk was recruited by telephone from the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana. He had worked with both Bolan and Zitka in various military operations, and he agreed to the proposition with only the sketchiest of information, even before he was told of the thousand-dollar "enlistment bonus." He promised to be in Los Angeles "as soon as I can sell three cows and clean the manure outta my fingernails."

Loudelk had been released to the dubious joys of the reservation only two months earlier. He had been the most fantastically effective advance scout in Bolan's memory, surpassing even Zitka in nerveless efficiency. In Vietnam Loudelk had personally accounted for sixty-seven enemy dead, yet had fired not a single shot. He was an expert with a knife and had developed to a fine art the technique of snapping a human neck with one swift movement of bare hands.

They found Angelo (Chopper) Fontenelli In a topless pizza parlor and bar in Santa Monica, where he had been employed as a combination doorman, bouncer, and maitre d'. The twenty-four-year-old native of New Jersey, though only slightly more than five and a half feet tall, was not often a party to casual disputes. Powerfully built from the ground up, with mammoth chest and shoulders, thick and squat, the tough little Italian ranked high in Bolan's respect.

Chopper was so called because of his expertise with heavy automatic weapons. One year earlier he had covered the withdrawal after one of Bolan's sniping missions, single handedly plugging a battalion-strength pursuit by the enemy for nearly an hour before being reinforced by helicopter gun-ships. He listened attentively to the recruiting pitch, wet his lips nervously each time the word "Mafia" was spoken, then accepted the stack of crisp twenties from Bolan with the simple comment: "Jesus—never thought it could happen, but I'm so sick o' titties I could puke."

Fontenelli came into the Death Squad complete with his own weaponry: a fifty-caliber water-cooled machine gun; one of the new gatling-type superguns salvaged from a crashed Magic Dragon gunship; and a complete arsenal of miscellaneous light automatics representing the best from both sides of the Vietnam conflict. How he had acquired this private collection and transported it to the United States was Fontenelli's own secret; he pointedly avoided any discussion of the subject but gladly "rented" his arsenal to the Death Squad.

Juan (Flower Child) Andromede was rehabilitated from a reality cult in the North Hollywood hills where he had become known as "Fra Juanito" eleven short months after his recognition as "the Butcher of Tanh Yin." Also a heavy-weapons man, Andromede was a poetry-spouting mass-death expert who used a field mortar like a six-gun. He was also highly proficient with various other types of light artillery and had been widely respected in the delta for his uncanny ability to operate independently of spotters and other fire-control techniques. An unusual product of New York's ghettos, the mild-mannered Puerto Rican signaled his acceptance of Bolan's recruiting efforts with the quiet statement: "Only the dead can accept heaven. Hell is for the living. A thousand bills advance money, eh? Okay. I accept hell."

Andromede was twenty-three, lightly built, deceptively delicate appearing. He brought out the mother instinct in women and inspired middle-aged men to call him "son." He verbally deplored violence, wore peace beads day and night, and stoutly denied that he had ever killed. "I didn't kill those people I liberated them. Death is the liberation of the entity." In Vietnam, he had "liberated" several hundred entities.

Herman (Gadgets) Schwarz was plucked from a technical school on the east side of Los Angeles, where he had been taking a course designed to equip him with an FCC license in radio electronics. Schwarz was one of those rare individuals who know more instinctively than their instructors know deliberately. He strongly resented living in a world that was more impressed by academic exercises than by demonstrated ability. "No license, no job," had been the message from his society, so Schwarz had reluctantly submitted to the indignities of classroom formality. After five months of "esoteric nonsense," the electronics genius was altogether ready for Bolan's proposition. He had been a counterintelligence advisor in Vietnam and had once "bugged" a VC command bunker to gain intelligence from a Bolan-Zitka sniper-team operation. Bolan had been deeply impressed by Schwarz's cool and painstaking methodology and was particularly elated to number him in the Death Squad. Once, according to official record, Schwarz had lain for six days in high grass at the edge of a VC stronghold, gathering intelligence with a directional microphone and a pocket recorder. Bolan regarded him as a formidable weapon in his war against the Mafia.

Jim (Gunsmoke) Harrington was flushed from a suburban Los Angeles amusement park, where he was employed as a "gunfighter." One of the few men to Bolan's knowledge who had been allowed to carry personal weapons into battle, Harrington had brought the image of the old West into the firefights of Vietnam, with two six-guns worn in quick-draw fashion. It had not been all image—his Colts were equipped with specially designed hair triggers. This youngster from an Idaho sheep ranch could draw both guns and hit a fast-moving target at a hundred feet more quickly than most men could think about it. He had been Bolan's flank man on a score of sniping missions and had repeatedly demonstrated his value in the sudden eyeball encounters with the enemy that were so common on the deep-penetration strikes. With .44-caliber ammunition worse than scarce in the combat theater, Bolan had endeared himself to Harrington by helping him set up a makeshift armory in which he could make his own ammo.