The Talifero squad reached the edge of the gardens, almost in the shadow of the galleon, and tried to take cover behind a foot-high wall. With the first volley from their pistols, the chatter of a light machine-gun answered back, interspersed with the whoomps from the galleon, and four Taliferi learned the hard way that a foot of wall was not wall enough. The man in the now-dishevelled Palm Beach suit commanded, "Back, back, this is no good!"

Bolan had been preoccupied with the galleon sentries and had therefore not known of the rush of men to the street when the oddball shooting broke out at the hotel. He had been, in fact, puzzled by that outbreak though thankful for it and more than willing to twist it to his own advantage. He was even more puzzled, then, when at the height of his strike men began moving up over the roof areas from the street-side of the building, and he was strongly curious as to why they were firing at something down in the street rather than into Bolan's position.

There was no time to ponder the question, though — he was being challenged from the wall just below. A rain of bullets punched into the bulkhead just behind him. He moved his triggerfinger onto the M-16 and gave them a quick burst. Three or four of his challengers toppled over backwards and the rest immediately began to fall back.

He had gone through an entire belt of M-79 ammo, and there was but one belt left. He would have to make a tactical decision very shortly; for the moment, there were those characters on the roof inviting his attention. He kept raking the courtyard with sporadic bursts from the M-16 and dragged over his final belt of M-79 heavy stuff, then slipped a round of HE into the red-hot breech of the grenade launcher, sighted carefully toward the roof, and let fly.

Hannon's riot force had roared up into a startled eyeball confrontation for which neither side was really quite prepared. The guys had come tearing out of the hotel with blood in their eyes and obviously looking for something to shoot at, and it had been just their damn tough luck to have found the Dade Force instead of whatever it was they'd been looking for.

Hannon later admitted that perhaps it could all have been resolved peacefully except that in that first tense moment when the two startled forces were eyeing each other over their hardware, something exploded in the bell tower directly overhead and large chunks of adobe rained down upon both forces. A young trooper several feet to the side of Hannon overreacted with a spontaneous buckshot blast from his riot gun at pointblank range into the astounded men from the hotel. Someone fired back, perhaps also reflexively, and one of Hannon's uniformed men fell.

From there it was a spontaneous shootout, with both sides diving for cover and not awaiting directions from anyone. Added to this was the unsettling sounds of open warfare and general pandemonium from beyond the walls, and it is doubtful that any of the men outside the hotel, Captain Hannon included, had any large idea of just what was happening or why.

The Hacienda men did have presence of mind enough to bolt clear of the light spilling from the hotel entrance. By the time the Dade Force had reached protective cover behind their vehicles, the others had melted into the shadows of the windowless building; two uniformed officers and five members of the other force lay wounded in the no-man's-land between.

Hannon got to his bullhorn and bawled, "Throw out your weapons and come forward with hands raised." The instructions were all but drowned out in the booming explosions and rattle of small-arms fire beyond the walls. He threw down the PA and told his sergeant, "Hell, this is impossible. Pass the word to hold fire and await further instructions. Fire only if fired upon."

"What the hell is going on in there, Cap'n?" the sergeant asked.

"How the hell should I know! You wanta go in and ask?"

The sergeant's reply was lost in another booming explosion beyond the walls. He shook his head and slipped away to pass on the captain's instructions.

Moments later men began to appear on the roof, snaking furtively up the sloped tiles and slipping over the peak to the courtyard site. Hannon shouted through his PA: "You men on the roof! Halt or be fired upon!"

Scattered shots came back in reply. Harmon grabbed a plainclothes officer and ordered, "Get those spotlights going, back along the building there. There must be an emergency ladder to the roof. Seal it off. Get some men along that wall down there. Shoot anything that moves across that roof!"

At that precise instant, the area of Harmon's concern was subjected to a shattering explosion. Two bodies and a sizeable section of the roof were ejected and hurled off somewhere into the darkness.

Hannon knew, then, what was "going on" in there. The question now uppermost in his mind was what, precisely, could he do about it. The beam of a powerful searchlight arced across the darkness then and illuminated a large section of the roof. Hannon found himself looking at the handsome face of a blond man in a once-impeccable Palm Beach suit. There was a large bloodstain on his shoulder and the expression on his face sent a shiver down the almost unshiverable spine of a 35-year police veteran. He was there for one brief instant, sliding awkwardly over the peak to the other side, and then he was gone and Captain Hannon was wondering. Bolan? No — Bolan's rugged face could never be reduced to such pretty angles — this guy was something else, but what else?

Hannon leaned into the open doorway of his cruiser, snared his mike, and told the Dade dispatcher, "I want some mobile units behind this place, Ed. I don't care how you get 'em there, but get'em there damn quick!"

"Yessir."

"And Ed . . . this is a blood roll. Let's shoot to kill."

Ciro Lavangetta was in a mental state closely approaching shock. He had somehow managed to get off the roof alive, scrambling down seconds after the bell tower exploded but not quite soon enough to avoid being laced across the forehead by an angry double-ought ball from Bolan's second round. He had seen the Talifero boy take his circus-stunt leap to safety, and had heard the sarcastic comment he'd hurled at Di Carlo. Somehow he had also made it across the insane courtyard while being alternately buffeted by exploding munitions, choked by teargas, and trampled by panicky Mafiosi. He stepped quietly into his room, switched on the lamp, turned on the television, and made himself a drink, then sat tensely on a hard chair and stared unseeingly at the television screen, the drink clenched in his hand and forgotten. The welt across his forehead was red with congealed blood, several fingers of which trailed down to his eyebrows.

None of this bothered Ciro Lavangetta now. He was a dead man already and none realized this truth with such subjective conviction as Ciro himself. What the hell, he'd tried. It was a beautiful idea, nobody could ever take that away from Ciro no matter how it had turned out. It'd been a beautiful idea. But that Bolan. That goddamn Bolan couldn't even be trusted to not cross him up at a time like that. If he'd hit 20 seconds earlier, or even twenty minutes later, everything would have turned out all right for Ciro. But no. The goddamn bastard had to do it right when he shouldn't have.

Arizona Ciro, the master of the perfect timetable, had been crossed up by a lousy trick of time. Nobody was fooled by it now, especially nobody named Talifero. Ciro was as good as dead.

The hell was still going on outside, but that couldn't bother Ciro now. Hell no. Nothing could bother him now. Not even the certain knowledge that he had unwittingly played right into Bolan's timetable. Ciro had messed it up good, he'd got everybody off balance — god how he'd messed it up, and now Bolan was out there and he had 'em all by the balls, and god he was squeezin' like hell, wasn't he. Well it didn't matter now. Ciro was already a dead man.