"Get Phoenix on the phone, Jake. I need another parley with Hinshaw."

Lucania answered, "Sure, boss," and went to place the call. It had been over two hours since Bonelli's last contact with Hinshaw, and more than an hour and a half since Paulie had pulled out with a war party. Bonelli was sending reinforcements all right, and he was sending his son and strong right arm as well, just to insure that there was no more dicking around.

Minutes passed, and then Lucania reappeared to announce: "He's on line two, sir."

Bonelli nodded a silent thanks and scooped up the receiver, greeting Hinshaw with a curt, "What's happening up there?"

The younger man's voice sounded defensive, on edge, and maybe just a bit nervous as he answered. "No change, Mr. Bonelli. My-we're sitting tight like you suggested."

"Okay. Paul is on the way, with some help, Look for him any time now."

There was a long pause, and when Hinshaw spoke again, the note of tension and suppressed resentment in his voice made Bonelli smile. "I understand, sir. As you wish. But I honestly feel that I-"

"It's no disgrace to need help, kid. You been hurt bad. Paul can give you a lot of comfort. How many boys You got left there?"

"Roughly a dozen, sir. They're all in top form, and I'm confident that with the replacements you've sent we can save the play without further difficulty."

"Yeah, great," Bonelli answered, though certain in his own mind that there would be a great deal more difficulty before the final curtain came down in Phoenix.

Hinshaw was muttering more assurances when Bonelli broke in again. "Listen, about this Bolan thing-"

Bonelli's words were cut off by a curious hollow booming sound at the other end of the line. It filled his ear, stabbing Painfully into his brain, and the line was suddenly buzzing, with Hinshaw in the background loudly demanding to know what the hell that was. The sounds from the Phoenix end became jumbled then, with a second explosion and a third coming almost together, and the loud thunking sounds which Nick Bonelli, the old street warrior, identified at once as heavy-caliber bullets ripping through walls and furniture. Hinshaw and company were catching hell in Phoenix, and Bonelli could do nothing but sit there and listen to it happen. And then, suddenly, he could not even do that. The line went dead.

But no, it couldn't be dead. He could still hear the sounds of battle, the staccato gunfire and booming explosions. They sounded the same, and yet different at the same time. Sharper somehow, and clearer. Closer.

Nick Bonelli rose from his chair and bolted for the study door as the floor beneath him lurched in another blast. The rattle of gunfire was loud in his ears now, and there could be no possible doubt as to its meaning. Lucania burst through the door at that precise instant, a thin trickle of dark blood bisecting his ashen face.

"It's a hit," he shouted at the would-be Boss Of Bosses. "We're being hit!"

Bolan had pushed the warwagon hard, urging unaccustomed speed from the Toronado engine and reaching his target in western Tucson with minutes to spare. Nick Bonelli's fortress home lay there, almost on the fringe of Rolling Hills golf course and backed against a river bed called Pantano Wash. Bolan made a quick drive-by, pressing the appropriate button on his command console to trigger the "collection" of data from miniature recorder-transceivers previously installed on the Bonelli Phone terminals. The taped data was pre-edited and time-phased, Omitting wasteful periods of silence to present an uninterrupted flow of intelligence. The playback was running as Bolan prepped for combat, enlightening him as to the latest troop movements and reassuring him that the capo was at home within those walls.

He stowed the warwagon In a screen of willows along Pantano Wash, on the northwest flank of Bonelli's hardsite, and immediately enabled the rocketry, aligning selected points of the manor house and fortifications in the range finder of the firing grid and registering the coordinates in the memory bank. His touch upon a special set of controls meshed the computer and firing mechanism, setting the rocketry on "automatic." He set the console timer two minutes ahead and quit that vehicle, the sounding of the lethal metronome loud in his ears.

The Executioner moved swiftly over the arid ground, despite the tremendous load he carried.

Along with the Automag and Beretta, extra clips and grenades girding his waist, he carried his big double-punch weapon, the M-16/M-79 combo. The autoloading assault rifle could spew 5.56mm tumblers at a rate of 900 rounds per minute, while the 40mm hand cannon slung underneath was a single-shot breech-loader, handling tear gas, buckshot or HE rounds at the discretion of the gunner.

Satchels filled with Clips for the M-16 and mixed rounds for the grenade launcher completed the Bolan combat rig, upping his normal weight by some seventy-five Pounds.

He did not seem to feel that weight or be affected by it as he scaled the stony wall and put himself inside Bonelli's estate. He moved swiftly across the rolling expanse of finely manicured lawn, making no effort at concealment while his mental alarm clock ticked off the numbers until doomsday.

The first hardman saw him at fifty yards out. Obviously unable to believe his eyes, the guy just stood there and gaped for about a half-second too long. When he made his move, simultaneously squawking a warning and reaching for his sidearm, the effort was too little and too late. Bolan's finger stroked the trigger of the M-16 and the guy went into a jerky little dance of death. The gunfire alone would have alerted the whole compound, but it was instantly eclipsed by the sound of hell arriving to visit the ungodly.

Bolan had glanced at his watch and saw the sweep second hand signal doomsday. Over his left shoulder, then, came a faint whoosh from the warwagon's rocket pods as the thunderbolts came in directly on time and on target, rattling over the low defensive wall at three-second intervals. Number one erupted at the front gates, shattering those portals and flinging the debris of stone and humanity about like so much flotsam on a raging sea. Number two impacted between two limousines parked in the curving drive, lending shreds of blackened steel and streamers of flaming gasoline to that lethal atmosphere. Numbers three and four had been reserved for the manor house itself, and they plowed in as ordered by the warwagon's electronic brain, unleashing a volcano of flame and oily smoke within that palace of corruption.

Men were milling around that funeral pyre like ants In a bonfire. They were shouting and brandishing weapons, but confusion reigned supreme and no man seemed certain where to go or what to do. The Executioner helped to resolve that fatal uncertainty, sweeping the ranks with a prolonged burst from his automatic rifle. Guys were flopping around down there, wallowing in their own Juices and shrieking as the spray of steel-jackets ripped through them. Those still standing spun toward Bolan and flung Ineffectual pistol fire in his general direction.

He emptied the clip of the M-16 into those stumbling, staggering straw men, then slammed a fresh clip home and emptied that one as well. Unsatisfied, he gave the M-79 Its roaring head, alternating rounds of buckshot and high explosives as he marched a parade of death across those hellgrounds.

A handful of walking wounded were frantically dragging themselves toward hopeful cover.

Bolan let those survivors go, turning his attention to the house itself. It was burning now in spots, sagging badly in others where the deadly firebirds had impacted in their flight, but the overall structure stood defiantly, a symbol of all that Bolan had sought to eradicate in Arizona. He turned the grenade launcher on that castle of gloom, spewing round after round of explosives and gas into the smoking shell. Masonry flew. Bricks showered the grounds, punching holes through the pall of smoke in their passage. Secondary explosions sounded within the bowels of that structure as a plume of inky smoke rose straight into the cloudless Arizona sky.