He laid out the belts and thumbed in a round of high explosive for openers, then placed the wicked little launcher aside and raised the glasses for a quick recon of the combat zone.

A procession of heavy vehicles broke the horizon, moving swiftly, closing — one, two, hell, eight big crew wagons. Directly below, the Hinshaw camp was coming alive — guys scurrying about in desert denims, blending far too well with that landscape and getting set for a blow.

Bolan smiled grimly as he picked up the Weatherby. Yeah. It was likely to be a hell of a blow.

They came roaring in like a wild horse stampede, raising a cloud of dust that trailed out for a half a mile behind, single-filing it until the last fifty yards or so, then wheeling it over in a fancy maneuver that Put all eight cars In rank abreast, nose to the fence.

Hinshaw growled, "Lookit that. What the hell is he doing?"

Bonelli cracked a window to call over, "Send your boys out, Jimmy. We'll use our wheels. We got plenty of room."

Hinshaw flipped away his cigarette, gripped the gate with both hands and called back, "It's all changed. Word from your papa. Come on in."

The only immediate response to that was an abrupt raising of Bonelli's window. Hinshaw stood woodenly at the gate, wondering what the hell, feeling like a fool.

Long seconds elapsed. A door opened and a guy stepped out — one of the crew bosses, a Tucson hotshot. "Mr. Bonelli wants you to come talk to him!" hotshot announced.

"What the hell is this?" Hinshaw yelled. "YOU tell Mr. Bonelli I'm here, looking at him. I got a message from his papa. But I sure as hell ain't going along with this shit!"

The window came back down. Bonelli stuck his head out cautiously. "What's the message?"

"What the hell are you doing?" Hinshaw cried. "What am I suddenly, a leper? I don't talk to you this way, Paul."

"What's the message?"

Hinshaw ground his teeth together. It was true then. Bolan had it pegged for sure. He was about to fling an angry retort at the traitorous bastard when something quite remarkable got there first.

Paul Bonelli's face simply disintegrated. The mouth turned dark and gaping, the nose collapsed into it, the eyes disappeared and the whole miserable mess disintegrated into frothy pulp. The wheelman yelled something and lunged away from those spraying juices. Only then did the sound overtake the macabre scene, a hollow boom from somewhere up the canyon, and it was James Hinshaw's turn to react. He flung himself into the dust and rolled like crazy for the closest cover, a shallow depression near the gatepost, his mind racing ahead into the numbing understanding of what would immediately, inevitably, follow.

The hotshot crew boss was the next to go spinning off into eternity, caught dead in his tracks as he sprinted for the protected side of his vehicle, down and wallowing in deflated flesh even before the second big boom came down.

And then it was "Nam all over again, ambush in the wilderness, a hundred frenzied weapons in reflexive fire as hell came down all around — and Jim Hinshaw flat in the middle.

Several of the crew wagons from Tucson lurched forward, punching through the flimsy, fence in angry retort, muzzles blazing from every window.

Jim Hinshaw knew that it was all a horrible mistake.

But he was obviously the only one there who knew it. The guy with the big boomer knew it. Yeah, Bolan knew it.

And Jim Hinshaw knew, in a highly personal sense, what it was like to be the fraggee. He'd been had ... by an expert. And that went double for Bonelli Junior.

Bolan had monitored through binoculars the tense confrontation at the compound gate, read it accurately, sealed it with a thundering kiss from the Weatherby — then played the reaction entirely by ear.

The Bonelli force read the attack as treachery from the Hinshaw camp. Morales, commanding at the rear and unable to precisely understand the unfolding events, held no options whatever in the face of the furious retaliatory attack by the Bonelli guns. The inevitable result was a blazing firefight between two "friendly" forces.

And Bolan assisted that development, also, with a few touches from the background. He raised the M-79, sighted down on an invading hardwagon just inside the compound, and sent them some HE. The big vehicle heeled immediately and wallowed to a halt in enveloping flames. A following round of smoke deposited at the gate further confused the landscape there — then a rapid shoestring of alternating HE and Frag laced that hellground with walking destruction and cascading pandemonium.

The staccato chatter of automatic weapons mingled with the echoing booms of busy shotguns and the angry yapping of pistols as the clash of arms quickly reached full fury.

Hinshaw's "reserves" were no panty-waist platoon. It was a disciplined and combat-worthy fire-team — equal to anything Bolan had seen in "Nam. Except for the Bolan influence, there would have been no doubt as to the outcome of that battle. Those guys knew what they were about — and they had the heavy arms to back up the expertise. A heavy machine gun was chewing ass all along the Bonelli front until Bolan spotted it and took it out. Likewise another couple of well-emplaced units with grenade launchers which were playing havoc with the street-corner cowboys from Tucson.

Within forty seconds after the fight erupted, all five penetrating Bonelli "tanks" were destroyed and burning. The entire area was strewn with the dead and dying from both sides. Cautious movements in both directions signaled the approaching lull and probable stalemate. Neither side had much fight left. Bolan could count a mere handful of survivors in desert denims, about the same for the other side. Smoke and dust clouded the tableau, restricting visibility and aiding the cautious withdrawal of both sides.

The three Bonelli vehicles which had remained beyond the fence line were now maneuvering carefully to pick up retreating survivors.

Bolan caught a flash glimpse of another vehicle within the compound — Angel Morales, he thought, at the wheel — also maneuvering carefully to shield a sprinting ghost from the past, the one and only James Ray Hinshaw.

Bolan was gathering his weapons and preparing to quit that place when the Bonelli vehicles sped away into the sunset. A moment later, two cars emerged from the rear area of the compound and raced off in obvious pursuit.

Bolan grinned soberly and returned to his cruiser.

He set the navigation gear for automatic track and began the final maneuver, he hoped, of the battle for Arizona.

Weiss stood in the shadow of a dilapidated hangar and watched a sleek twin-engine Cessna jet as it taxied out of the sunset and braked to a halt.

Two burly gorillas immediately descended to the ground, nostrils flaring warily as they separated and energetically strode to flanking defensive positions beside the plane. Weiss knew that he would have to become accustomed to such unsavory presences in his life; he would be seeing a lot of it from this point forward.

A moment later, the Capo Arizona himself appeared in the doorway and made a quick exit.

The senator experienced an involuntary tremor as he stepped forward to grasp that entrapping hand. They were not exactly strangers, of course. But overt contacts with the likes of Nick Bonelli were not apt to produce the most desirable public image for an elected official. There had been no social relationship whatever.

One would think that nothing whatever had happened.

The mafiaoso gave him a sober smile and greeted him with, "Hi, Senator. Long time no see."

Weiss could not return the smile. "I appreciate this, Nick," he said solemly.

The guy made a funny little twitch with his lips as he replied, "What are friends for?"