"You just can't figure everything," Zitka groused.

"So—that puts the burden of individual initiation on everyone's shoulders," Bolan replied. He angled his gaze toward Schwarz. "You have any problems, Gadgets?" he asked quietly.

Schwarz soberly shook his head. Timing was great from my standpoint. I was up out of that PT and T manhole at 6:05, on the button." He winked at Hoffower. "Only way to cut a cable, man. Get with me someday, Boom, and show me how to make those little specialties. Anyway, the timer was set for 6:10. I left Flower there, at the manhole, and cut across to the house. Got there at 6:12. Went in right behind the blast. Planted my little gems and was clear at 6:15. Picked up Flower Child at 6:19, and here we are."

"No trouble at the cable," Andromede reported. "Went off at 6:10, right on schedule. Sizzle, crack, pop—that easy. But oh, my nerves!"

Mark Washington laughed softly. "I could see you poppin' up outta that hole," he told Andromede.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Had you right in my crosshairs. Scares bird turds outta you, handling those little explosives, don't it? If you'd been black like me, you'd have turned white."

"You could see me that good?" Andromede asked incredulously.

"Sure. When ol' twenty power lays onto you, the veins in your eyeballs looks like the Martian canals."

"How was your view of the house?" Bolan asked.

"Pretty fair, on the north side and the back. Too many trees in front, but I could get the general drift of things even there. At the rear, though, I could've picked off anybody trying to break out. I guess." Washington smiled and added, "Some lady was swimmin' naked down on the east slope."

"Yeah?" Harrington asked interestedly.

Washington was still smiling. "Yeah. 'bout two streets down, little round swimmin' pool in the backyard."

"How does a big, fat tit look in a twenty power?" Zitka asked.

"Like a big, fat tit, I guess," Washington replied evenly. "But this one's wasn't fat. They was skinny and pointy-lookin'."

"I saw you, Deadeye," Loudelk reported quietly, his voice rising softly above the ensuing chuckles.

Washington turned an owlish stare onto the Indian. "Huh?"

"I caught a couple of flashes from your scope," Loudelk explained. "You better remember that. When you're sighting toward the rising or setting sun, you better do something about reflections off your lens."

"I'll use the Polaroids next tune," Washington mumbled humbly. "Thanks."

Bolan fidgeted slightly and asked, "Could you have covered our withdrawal okay, Deadeye? I mean, if there'd been a pursuit?"

"Some of you, sure. Not the jeep. Like I said, too many trees on that side. I could only catch a glimpse of things, now and then. You know how the twenty power reduces the field. But I did see the cops coming. I could have diverted them long before they ever got there—if I'd had to. Didn't have to, though. You had a three-minute lead on them. Now if some of those other cats had come poppin' outta the back of the house ... well, the range was only just over 400 meters. Yeah. I could've covered that angle okay." He chuckled merrily. "And I could've plowed a furrow right up fat-ass's behind, the way you had him strung out there. Man, he wasn't even breathin' hard."

Bolan grinned. "It was good for his soul, I'm sure," he commented.

"Yeah." Washington tugged at the tip of his nose. "I'd like to tell you something, Sarge."

"Okay."

"You run a sweet hit. It looked good, mighty good, from where I was. I didn't see nothin' wrong with the timing. It went just like you said—even to the cops."

Bolan sobered. "It has to stay that way. And especially where the police are concerned. We have to avoid them at any cost."

"Any cost?" Fontenelli growled.

"That's what I said."

"I don't get this love affair with the fuzz," Fontenelli grumbled.

"You want to get yourself a bluesuiter, Chopper?" Bolan asked quietly.

"Not 'specially. But if it comes down to, like between me'n them—well..." Fontenelli cast a quick survey of the assembled faces. "Well ... I'm not sure I'll want to break and run."

"You'd better break and run," Bolan said ominously. "You understand this. You deliberately shoot a cop, and you're out on your ass. Now understand it. You're out. I don't even like the contingency plan we had with Deadeye on today's strike. Shooting at a cop isn't much different than shooting into a cop, from the cop's point of view. All of you, now, understand this thoroughly. As long as we are just cleaning out the sewers, people will be rooting for us. Secretly, maybe, but still cheering. But you kill one cop, or one kid, or any other innocent bystander, and the cheering ends, soldier—it ends right there. The cops stop looking the other way and the news people stop romanticizing, and suddenly you're just another piece of sewer filth yourself. And then, Robin Hood, you're to hell out of business."

"Sure, sure," Fontenelli agreed quietly.

"All right." Bolan was studying the tips of his fingers. "I don't want to belabor the thing, but what I said in the beginning is just as certain as the sunrise. I'll shoot dead in his tracks any man who tries to turn this squad into a ratpack. There's still time to get out if anybody has decided he doesn't like the setup."

A strained, almost embarrassed silence ensued. Bolan gave it full play before he smiled, cleared his throat, and began speaking again. "Fine. We" all know the score. Now let's talk about operations. Today's soft probe was a success from every angle.

Giordano was my only sure link with the western branch of the family. Now he knows we're in town. He knows we're onto him. We killed two of his boys, we wrecked his house, we took a chunk of money away from him, we humiliated him, and we showed him that he is living strictly at our pleasure." The smile broadened. "That's a helluva bitter mouthful for a Mafia honcho to chew on. He will be laying quiet for a few hours, at least until the cops stop poking around the neighborhood. Then hell start braying like the tin god he is. He will start threshing around and flexing his muscles and demanding our heads on a Mafia platter. This is precisely what we want him to do."

Bolan turned an amused gaze onto his friend Zitka. "Remember that operation at Vanh Duc, Zitter?" he asked.

Zitka responded with a broad grin. "Yeah," he said, his gaze sweeping the circle of faces. The Ninth was conducting a sweep into long-time VC territory. No contact, no contact, everywhere they probed. Knew damn well the northmen were around there, but they just kept fading away. All the Ninth flushed during a ten-day sweep was a bunch of terrorized villagers. So they sent us in."

His gaze flicked to Bolan and lingered there for a moment; then he chuckled and resumed the account. "It was Mack and me, two flankmen, two scouts. We walked for three days, and we knew where we was headed. We played the VC game, see. Hit and fade, hit and fade. By the time we'd penetrated to Vanh Duc, the VCs were screaming bloody murder. We'd already executed one of their generals, a half a dozen high-ranking field officers, and about that many of their village politicians. They were fit to be tied. Finally the northmen had to come outta their holes. Losing face, see, to a lousy six-man team. They sprung their trap on us at Vanh Duc—and of course, that's what we'd been aiming at all the time. We got a full battalion chasing our butts out across the rice paddies, and that's where they met our air force."

"I remember that operation," Harrington put in. "That was the time the airborne infantry was living in helicopters for three days."

That was Vanh Duc," Zitka confirmed, nodding his head soberly. "We smoked 'em out, and what the air force didn't get, the Ninth did."

"We're playing a Vanh Duc game here," Bolan explained. He glanced at his watch. "Only there will be no air-force or infantry reinforcements to finish the job once we've smoked the enemy into the open. We have to do the entire job ourselves. We're going to hit 'em, and hit 'em, and keep on hitting 'em until they're trying to hide up each other's asses. Then, when we know who they are and where they are, all of them—then we squash them. That's the entire plan. We play the details by ear. Gadgets has bugs all over Giordano's house, and he put a recorder on the telephone. In just about two hours, Zitter and Bloodbrother will take up their stakeout positions. Flower, you're on Zitter. Gunsmoke, on Bloodbrother. You know the routing—play it like life and death, 'cause that's what it's going to be. Boom, you alternate the electronics watch with some Gadgets. Politician and Deadeye, on me but not too close, give me room to operate. Chopper, you've got base camp security. Oh—and Boom, how long would it take you to make about a dozen of those little impact grenades?"