Officer Ward was moving efficiently along the line of chairs, issuing a stack of the cards to be passed along each row. Braddock continued. "Special instructions have been issued to every mobile unit in this department, for a prearranged reaction upon receipt of a Hardcase alert. Bolan is a military tactician, and a darned effective one, I'm told. He should not be regarded as a lunatic. He is not a wild-eyed fanatic or a bloodthirsty gunslinger, and any attempts to deal with him from this viewpoint will generally be ineffective. From all I have been able to learn of his M.O., he studiously avoids any confrontation with police authority. He apparently goes to great lengths to protect innocent bystanders. He is still, of course, a dangerous criminal. He must be apprehended at the earliest possible moment.

"Now—I want to take just a moment to review with you The Executioner's activities at Pittsfield last month."

Braddock shuffled his papers, delicately cleared his throat, directed a pleasant gaze upon the assemblage, then began his reading. "On August 22nd, firing from an upper floor of a building a hundred yards distant, he shot to death five officers of a Mafia-controlled loan company, in the street outside their office. He used a Marlin .444 with telescopic sights, and he fired only five shots. There was no return fire, although two of his victims were armed. No injuries were sustained by bystanders.

"Apparently he then managed to infiltrate the local Mafia activities, went to work for them, and gained a familiarity with their operations in and around Pittsfield. According to police intelligence, the Mafia was tipped to Bolan's true role shortly thereafter, and a contract was let for his death. On the morning of August 31st, two Murder, Incorporated, contractors were shot to death during a gun battle in Bolan's apartment.

"This is when the fireworks began in earnest, and this is where the Bolan M.O. begins to show its sting. He seems to go in for the thunder-and-lightning technique, hitting hard, fast, and repeatedly in a blitzkrieg offensive which keeps his enemies reeling and confused. On the afternoon of August 31st, Bolan knocked over a prize pleasure palace ..." Braddock raised his eyes and grinned. "A house of prostitution, gentlemen." A responsive titter from the assembled lawmen greeted the unnecessary explanation.

Braddock paused to allow the good humor to run its course; then he continued. "He knocked over a prized palace in a suburban community, burning it to the ground, then lay cooly on a distant hillock and shot the tires off a parked police cruiser and a fire captain's car, then punched a fusillade into an approaching carload of Mafia henchmen, wounding one of them severely and destroying the expensive automobile."

A shuffling and chuckling in the audience again brought Braddock to a pause. He dabbed at his forehead with a handerchief. "It's no wonder this boy captured the public fancy," he went on. "A lot of people identified with him, you see, even a lot of police officers. This is an attitude that has worked in Bolan's favor. Needless to say, it hurts the police efforts. Bolan is a war hero. He has been repeatedly decorated for valor and heroism. Many honest, law-abiding citizens are in strong sympathy with him. The Bolan image runs somewhat along these lines: One of our boys in Vietnam, a decorated boy, is called home from the wars to bury his family, victims of Mafia terrorism. Heroic boy from Vietnam becomes avenger, declares a one-man war on the homefront underworld, and sallies forth into a heroic war against another of our country's enemies. Bunk!"

Braddock raised his eyes to gaze levelly upon his audience. I say again, gentlemen—bunk! This is a terribly and a dangerously misleading image. Mack Bolan is a highly trained death machine. He is extremely dangerous, both in a positive and in a negative sense. He is a remorseless killer, an executioner in the strictest sense, a brilliant tactician who would replace law and justice with the code of the battlefield. He is judge and jury, prosecution and defense, the law, the final word.

"But let's get back to Pittsfield. A short while after his assault upon the pleasure palace, he shows up at the palatial estate of one of the Mafia chieftains. He is dressed in a power-company uniform. He coldbloodedly slips a knife into the two security men guarding the property and dumps their bodies into the swimming pool, after first severing power and telephone lines and luring the men out of the house to assist him in checking out the trouble. Then he goes inside the house, slashes the mattresses on all the beds, and shoots up a large portrait of the Mafia chieftain. This was purely a harrassment tactic—obviously he knew that the owner of the property was not at home.

"But this is another significant feature of the Bolan M.O. Apparently he had been exposed before he could penetrate into the higher councils of the Mafia. He was trying to jar them, frighten them— to roust them into a panic that would smoke the higher ups into the open. And this boy does move fast. Listen, now. That same afternoon he returned to the scene of his first hit, the loan company, calmly walked in and helped himself to a secret Mafia cache of undeclared wealth, some one-quarter million, it is said, then ordered the employees to stack all their loan records in a pile on the floor and burn them."

Braddock looked up with a broad grin. "Now, how many thousands of good, upstanding citizens would you imagine became endeared to The Executioner through that simple act? He burned the loan records."

Again he waited for the amused response to settle; then he continued. "I'm trying to give you some insight into this guy—and possibly explain why the news people have contributed so much to his hero image. He is a heroic figure. He's a natural for the role. People enjoy hearing about a guy who is getting away with it, especially if they can visualize him wearing a clean white hat.

"It should be noted, also, that Bolan apparently has an appreciation for his image. He picks his battlefields carefully, confining them, generally, to Mafia property. He is kind and considerate to bystanders and goes to great lengths to keep them out of the line of fire. Instead of bursting into a house with his guns blazing, he meticulously weeds out the villains, invites them outside, and neatly dispatches them. A household servant does not even see the color of their blood.

That night—that same night, yes; he keeps moving—Bolan broke contact at another chieftain's house and ran when the guy's wife starts plinking away at him with a little target pistol. He did not return her fire but elected to break off and run, and it cost him. He was hit, but I guess not too badly. He dropped out of sight for a few days. He could afford to. Earlier that same evening, the night he was wounded, he had followed one of the chieftains to a Mafia family council and broke up the proceedings with a long-range sniper attack—and this one seemed calculated to only serve notice that he had located their headquarters. This is another M.O.-signiflcant tactic. He tied it in later. The family's nerves must have been fraying tremendously during Bolan's recuperative period. Even the fates, it seems, are sympathetic with this guy.

"Follow this action, now, in his second blitzkrieg. First he calls the local police department and warns them that he's hitting tonight—and to keep clear. Is he naive, brazen, or boastful?" Brad-dock shook his head. "Apparently his first stop is at a private warehouse where war-surplus munitions and arms are kept. Note the image keeping, now. He breaks into the warehouse and carefully selects a personal arsenal. He leaves behind a detail itemization of the stolen goods—and more than enough money to pay for them.

"And now, on to the blitzkrieg. A series of lightning strikes, at widely separated locations, succeeds in bringing the local Mafia hierarchy into full session. It appears that they committed themselves to a full and final confrontation, and the forces they had arrayed against this man were formidable, to say the least. Bolan must have known that he was walking into a Mafia setup. Of course he knew—he had maneuvered them into just such a confrontation. And the Pittsfield family never really understood the Bolan mentality. He'd been fighting them all along with conventional weapons. A knife, a pistol, a high-powered rifle. He was a man alone. The Mafia brought in a small army, set up some machine guns, and thought they would squash him like a bug the minute he made his move. He showed them the error of their thinking, and we certainly have to respect the Bolan fighting brain. He hit those people with everything in the arsenal, and he was waging a war like the soldier he is. He lit the skies with flares, then sat safely in the dark, a quarter mile away, and hit them with mortars, rockets, and—you name It, he had It. The most amazing part of this entire incredible story is that he then slipped through a police dragnet that numbered more than a hundred city and county lawmen."