The sedan lurched to a stop, its punctured radiator spluttering its death rattle. The girl was going crazy, her mouth yawning in a soundless scream, but her companion in the rear seat retained more self-composure. A side door sprang open and ejected that hardman in a diving headlong roll, his frantic hands clawing for gun-leather. The Beretta chugged out a deadly double message, and the guy's graceful dive suddenly became an awkward blood-drenched wallow of death.

Bolan moved swiftly to the car and leaned inside. The front seaters were both dead as hell, the backs of their skulls missing and replaced by sodden muck. The fourth passenger, however, was very much alive.

And, quite naturally, scared as hell.

Her screams were winding down to a breathless series of panting little gasps. At sight of Bolan and that ominous black blaster, she began screaming again, shrill, strangled sounds, eyes bulging and face reddening. She was dressed only in a wraparound bathrobe, and that was blotched with spreading Patches of blood.

The kid was lapsing into hysterics. It was no time for sophisticated handling. So he slapped her. Twice. Hard, stinging blows across each pale cheek. She sobered immediately, her wheezing cries dying to an injured murmur.

"You're okay," he said, the tone firm and reassuring. "Cool it. Who are you?"

The girl's mouth worked for a couple of seconds before the sounds emerged. "I-I'm Sharon Kaufman."

Oh yeah. Wonderful. Bolan's cup fairly runneth over. He pulled the girl out, slung her across his shoulder, and without wasting a precious moment, hurried to the warwagon with his "prize."

The going was not all that easy, though. She was no frail wisp of a girl but a substantial chunk of womanhood with long, flowing lines and plenty of nice womanflesh packed onto that feminine frame. Bolan sized her out at about 130 to 140 pounds and close to six feet in height. If she'd wanted to put up a fight, he would have had his hands full. But there was no fight in this one. She was still obviously terrified, confused, perhaps only partially conscious.

He deposited her on a bunk in the warwagon and peeled away the bloodied robe. She shrank from that invasion of personal privacy but made no move to interfere with the inspection. "Miss Boobs," for sure. Not just big but big and firm, proud and — in most any other circumstances — tantalizing.

"Please!" she whispered. "Don't ... don't ..."

"Relax," he said pleasantly. "I'm just looking for hurts." He closed the robe and told her, "You pass. A-OK. None of the blood is yours. You'll feel a lot better after you've scrubbed it off." He pointed out the shower stall to her. "Don't waste the water. It's a small tank."

He patted her hand and gave her a friendly smile, then went forward to send the battle cruiser to softer ground. Circling the streets of Paradise, Bolan drove with one portion of his mind while using the rest to probe the new dimensions of his problem.

Moe Kaufman had been the hit team's primary target, no doubt about it. He wasn't home, the voice on the phone had said — the girl would bring him to "us." So far it played. But had the crew been looking to hit the Jewish capo or merely abduct him? And to what ultimate end?

Sharon Kaufman was yet another wild card in the game. The Serpent's daughter, a pearl before swine. With the old man missing, her abduction had been the logical and inevitable move. If the mountain won't come to Mohammed ...

And where did Bolan's new "prize" fall in the scheme of things? A healthy and apparently vibrant young woman, but a serpent's daughter all the same. Where would she stand when the cut came?

Another imponderable in the Arizona game.

The players were multiplying like rabbits, and it was getting hard to tell them apart without a program. There was more than one serpent in Paradise now, and they were at war.

Bolan found himself joining the Arizona game late, already several moves behind. But he had captured a queen on his opening gambit, and it just might be enough. Enough to scatter the players, and maybe — just maybe enough, to upset the whole damn board.

The Executioner drove on deeper into Paradise, Searching for serpents.

Jim Hinshaw was unhappy, and rightly so. A consummate professional, accustomed to excellence in every undertaking, he naturally possessed a low tolerance for failure. It rankled, offending his sense of order, upsetting the sensation of control that he relished in every situation. He had invested six months of his time and over ten grand of Nick Bonelli's money to insure his control on the current project, only to find his thrust blunted and broken by unknown forces.

The Kaufman snatch should have gone off without a hitch. Hinshaw's spotters had staked the old man out for an honest-to-God solid month, charting his every move day and night, and he'd never once left the house before nine in the morning. Until today. The day. Hinshaw had abandoned his belief in miracles at age six, when his father stepped out for a quick beer and never came home, so Kaufman's absence had to be ascribed to either freakish coincidence or advance warning. Ever the realist, he opted for advance warning. And that meant a traitor.

Not within Hinshaw's troops, he was reasonably sure of that. His men were loyal. Loyal to the project out of greed and, at another level, loyal to him out of mingled fear and respect.

Hinshaw admired loyalty in his equals and demanded it from his subordinates. It was one of the qualities that marked the line between amateurs and pros, between a mob and a skilled team of operatives. It was essential to the maintenance of order.

Order demanded that Hinshaw salvage the situation in Phoenix. Loyalty and skilled professionalism would make that salvation possible.

Hinshaw began checking off the pluses and minuses of the current situation. Minuses first: Kaufman had slipped through their fingers, the broad — Kaufman's daughter — had managed to get away, too, and three of his men were stretched out in a refrigerated drawer downtown. That was 10 percent of his force out of action in the first skirmish, a skirmish that should not have occurred in the first place.

On the plus side, their cop downtown seemed convinced that one man alone had pulled the morning hit. Hinshaw was inclined to think his team had overlooked one of Kaufman's housemen, allowing the guy to take them by surprise on the way out. Carelessness kills. Awaiting Hinshaw's next order were the other pluses: Angel Morales and Floyd Worthy, Hinshaw's oldest friends from "Nam, his personal "secret weapons." And backing them up, twenty-five of the meanest, ass-kickingest boys who ever pulled a rod in Tucson, his boys now, courtesy of Nick Bonelli.

Hinshaw owed a lot to Bonelli, for all the trust and power and money — yeah, that counted, too — that the Tucson capo had supplied over the months. Nick Bonelli's goals and hopes were his goals now, his hopes, and by God, he couldn't bring himself to tell the old man that somebody had screwed up on phase one. He could still pull it out, and he damn well would. He owed that to Mr. Bonelli. And to himself.

Hinshaw punched buttons on the desk intercom and growled a summons. The office door opened to admit two men. They nodded greetings and moved toward empty chairs. They lacked ramrod spines and the overall military carriage that marked Hinshaw, yet they moved with an identical grace and power, emitting lethal vibrations into the room.

Pros, yeah. Men.

Angel Morales. Small and lean, straight black hair framing finely chiseled Latin features, sensual lips curving slightly in a little smile which widened to a grin in the heat of combat. And Floyd Worthy. Tall, grim, black as the ace of spades, his restless hands ever moving, at peace only when holding one of the weapons that he loved.