The first police cruiser to reach the scene did not arrive until 6:22, just moments ahead of the fire trucks and with the smokescreen beginning to dissipate. Spectators clustered about the police car to deliver breathless reports of the incident. The patrolman immediately radioed for reinforcements and restrained the fire department from entering the premises. Two additional cruisers arrived within minutes. The police then made a careful advance onto the property. A bullet-riddled, pajama-clad corpse was found in the lower hallway, just inside the house, an unfired pistol beneath the crumpled body. The dining room of the mansion had obviously been raked by machine-gun fire; furnishings were splintered; all four walls exhibited multiple punctures at chest-level; china and other fragile items were shattered.

The body of another man, this one fully clothed and wearing gun leather, was found in an upstairs sitting room. His skull was a bloodied pulp, smashed by the impact of numerous steel-jacketed slugs. One wall of an adjoining bedroom had been destroyed by an explosive blast, the gaping remains of a wall safe bearing mute testimony as to cause and effect.

At 6:30 the police found Emilio Giordano, owner of the property. Jack Matsumura, the gardener, was holding a lonely vigil and sadly contemplating his employer's state of being from a respectful distance. Giordano was apparently alive and unharmed but, in Patrolman Harold Kalb's assessment of the situation, In one hell of a fix." The millionaire was spread-eagled across a fertilizer pile at the edge of a flower garden, face-down, wrists and ankles tied to wooden stakes. Giordano was completely naked, and he was booby trapped.

A bewildering maze of fine wires criss-crossed over and under his body, terminating in a taut arrangement with the pins of two hand grenades, one between his hands and the other between his knees. A large black hand had been painted onto the flesh of his back.

Kalb sent another patrolman to radio for the bomb detail, then knelt gingerly close by and tried to comfort and reassure the carefully breathing victim. Giordano would risk not even the muscular contractions of speech, and it was a strange and strained twenty-minute wait for the experts of the demolitions squad.

Following another few minutes of painstaking and nerveracking work by the bomb unit, it was discovered that the grenades were nothing but practice dummies. Giordano became hysterically enraged and fainted. It was sometime past eight o'clock before the police were able to question the fifty-year-old millionnaire, and even then he could add very little to their meager knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the crime.

According to Giordano, he was awakened by a tall man with blond hair who was weirdly suited in an outfit like the commandos used to wear." The man was pressing the muzzle of a military-style .45 automatic against the base of Giordano's nose. The man ordered him to get out of bed. Giordano habitually slept nude; he tried to get dressed, but the man shoved him into the hallway before he could make a move toward his clothing.

Another man hurried out of the room behind them; the blast came an instant later. The tall man escorted Giordano down the stairs. "And by some other nuts who were shooting up the place" and into the rear yard. Another man ("... looked like an Indian") joined them there. "They threw me on that pile of filth," Giordano related, "and told me I could live for as long as I could lie perfectly still. How was I to know those things weren't real?"

Giordano identified the two dead men as his security guards but professed total ignorance of the identity of the intruders. The significance of the black hand that had been painted upon his back was not lost on the detective sergeant who questioned him; Giordano himself, however, offered no reason whatever why his tormentors would have done such a thing. He cited robbery as the only possible motive for the attack but declined even to estimate the amount of cash stolen.

A general shakedown of the area by the police yielded few additional clues. A uniformed security guard two blocks away from the scene reported the passing of a military vehicle carrying two men and a heavy gun "a few minutes after the explosion." Two attendants of a service station at the major intersection just beyond that point, however, were certain that no such vehicle had come their way. They had heard the explosion also and had been looking for some sign of unusual activity. They were unable to report the disturbance, they added, because their telephone had gone dead minutes earlier.

The police investigation continued in the Bel Air neighborhood through out most of the morning. At ten o'clock a hurriedly requested police file was being verifaxed from Pittsfield to Los Angeles. At 11:30 a hastily convened police conference at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice was told, "It would appear that Mack Bolan, the man called The Executioner, has come to Los Angeles. Apparently, he has not come alone. It would seem that he has brought a private army with him. All hell is going to break loose in this city unless we can do our job quickly and effectively. This is to be a maximum effort. Get Bolan!"

As these words were being spoken, the object of police concern was conducting a conference of his own. The scene was a comfortable beach house a few miles north of Santa Monica. The Terrible Ten were assembled on the patio. The atmosphere was informal and relaxed. Bundles of currency were stacked on a glass-topped table. The tinkling of ice against glass was the only sound as Mack Bolan lit a cigarette. He rocked his chair back to balance on the rear legs and quietly announced, "Well, it was a bit sloppy here and there, but well get better. Well have to. In a soft probe like this one, timing isn't all that important, but ..." He pinned Blancanales with a hard stare. "Politician, you were forty seconds early with that smokescreen. Bloodbrother was still wiring the grenades when the smoke got to us. If those had been live grenades ..."

"I got worried," Blancanales admitted. "Too many spectators. I was afraid somebody would do something stupid."

Bolan nodded his acceptance of the deviation and turned his gaze onto Fontenelli. "Good show with the jeep, Chopper. Beautifully executed. I guess the cops are still searching Bel Air for it."

Fontenelli grinned, warming noticeably under the praise. "I hope it drives 'em nuts," he said.

"How much goop did you use, Boom?" Bolan asked musingly, shifting to Hoffower.

"You said enough to eject the safe. I ejected it."

Bolan grinned. "You sure did. To the other side of the room. I was wondering if we could have gotten along with a bit less goop, though. That blast must have been heard clear down at city hall."

"Yeah, I overdid it a little," Hoffower said lightly. "First time I ever blew a safe. I added a bit of fudge factor, just in case."

Bolan blew a cloud of cigarette smoke at the stacks of currency, then picked up a packet and tossed it at Hoffower. This is the way it looks after a good blow," he said. "Now picture a pile of green confetti, and that's how it would look after a bad blow. Keep that in mind."

Hoffower grinned and tossed the money onto the table. "I'll keep 'em good."

Zitka coughed, cleared his throat, then said, "Okay, tell me how late I was gettin' the civilians out."

"Almost a full minute," Bolan replied evenly. The old colored man downstairs was caught in Gunsmoke's crossfire. If Gunsmoke hadn't shoved him into the pantry... well... What delayed you, Zitter?"

The upstairs maid was on the can," Zitka solemnly reported. "I hurried her all I could."

An amused titter ran through the squad. Someone said, "Praise the Lord and pass the toilet paper." Zitka turned flaming red.

"So we learned a lesson," Bolan commented, when the laughter had subsided. "We need to plan the human element into future timetables. Let's keep it in mind."