A simple shot one thousand yards away, beyond the calculated limits of the Marlin's range — but well within the big — game piece's killing distance. Bolan had to calculate the drop on each round that he fired and set his sights above the target, allowing the massive rounds to "fall in" on the human silhouettes with grim precision.

No sweat, sure.

As long as you could work the complicated physics problems in your head while holding your breath and sighting down the barrel of roaring elephant rifle.

No sweat. As long as you remembered that each round you fired was ripping into flesh and bone, separating souls from bodies downrange, sending cannibals to whatever awaited them beyond the pale. No problem.

Anyone could do it, given years of military training and two tours of field experience as the leader of a hunter-killer team in hostile jungles.

It was a goddamned piece of cake.

He would have thirty seconds, maximum, before someone downstairs could make himself understood on the telephone. Half a minute before the troops started reacting at Metro HQ down on Stewart, only blocks away. But half a minute could seem like an eternity on the receiving end of Bolan's pinpoint sniper fire.

And they were starting to recover over there, some cautious heads just poking up above the level of the conference table. He started counting once again, marking each of them, verifying faces and positions through the scope. They might as well have been ten feet away from him. His index finger curled around the Marlin's trigger and Bolan took another breath, releasing half of it, holding onto the rest.

Inside his skull the numbers sounded like a bass drum. But he silenced them with an effort of will.

There was no room for a distraction now. Whatever happened in the next five seconds, Bolan had to concentrate exclusively upon his targets. He was reaching out to touch someone, damn right, and rattling Spinoza's cage as it had never been before. Anyone who lived through Bolan's shake-up would be looking back across his shoulder from now on, expecting death to strike at any place and time.

A frightened man became a careless man, in Bolan's estimation, and he knew that careless people made mistakes.

In fact, he was counting on it.

Bolan settled into the squeeze, his mind closing the gap between hunter and target before the bullet ever flew. The mental countdown started. Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

It took a moment for the ringing silence to break through Spinoza's mental fog of terror.

Lying prone beneath the conference table, clinging to the carpet as if he might somehow fall off the floor, the capo from New York was trembling violently, afraid to open his eyes and face the damage all around him.

But the silence penetrated, finally, and he risked a peek. His first view was a pair of wing-tip shoes, years out of style but still available in certain stores, and favored by a few of his "executive" associates. He followed them along, over socks and pant legs, rumpled shirt and suit coat, until he found a face.

Or what was left of one.

And he was looking straight at Julio DePalma's. Somehow the bastard's somersault had brought him back around so that he lay facedown, his head turned to the left as if he had climbed down to check beneath the table for his cringing comrades. One eye peered back at Spinoza from the scarlet ruin of that never-handsome visage. All else — teeth and lips and nose and everything — had been punched back into a gaping fist-sized hole that no cosmetic job would ever close.

Sealed casket on this baby, Frank Spinoza thought, and he felt his lunch coming up. He turned desperately away from DePalma's leaking carcass, swallowing hard to keep everything inside and taking a deep breath to clear his head.

It almost worked.

Around him others were also taking note of the sudden silence, cautiously rising from their prone positions to assess the damage.

"Holy mother!" He recognized the voice of Johnny Cats. "That nervy bastard!"

There was amazement in the mafioso's voice, but Frank Spinoza was distracted, puzzling out exactly who and what the man from Cleveland meant.

Who was a nervy bastard?

Who had the sheer audacity to raid his penthouse in this fashion, dropping Julio and both his boys that way, scattering the assembled might of the commission's representatives like frightened children? And the answer hit him like a fist above the heart, bringing lunch and everything back into his tightening throat.

Seiji Kuwahara.

Damn it!

Everyone had seen it coming down to this, except Spinoza. Everyone except Spinoza and The Man.

Spinoza scowled, wriggling backward from his place of concealment, his mind working a mile a minute now. Suppose The Man had seen it coming?

Suppose he staked Spinoza out like some kind of goddamned Judas goat, leading the others to the slaughterhouse for some reason that Spinoza could not even fathom at the moment?

No.

It did not track.

There was no reason for betrayal, not when everything was going well for all concerned.

Tom Guarini was first on his feet, and under urging from his capo, he stood up warily, surveying the damage and whistling softly between his teeth.

"You're gonna need a maid up here, Frank," he said, trying for a light tone and missing it by a country mile. "You got one helluva..." The sentence ended in a plopping sound, as if someone had sliced a watermelon with a cleaver.

Frank Spinoza, on his knees and rising, was just quick enough to see Guarini undergo the transformation from a human being to headless scarecrow as his skull exploded into smithereens, wet pieces of it flying off in all directions. And a moment later Spinoza heard the rifle fire begin again as he dived toward the floor. Inside, he had been half expecting it, knowing Kuwahara would not let them off this easy.

He would make them crawl some more, rub their faces in it, retreating only when he felt the heat.

And where was the goddamned heat, anyway? Someone downstairs must have called police by now. The bastards were taking their time, letting him squirm, sure as hell. Spinoza was certain of it. The heavy rounds were raining down around him once again and Frank Spinoza ate the carpet, squirming back into the sanctuary of the conference table. He was safe there, for the moment, and he would let the others take care of theirs.

He was planning ahead with the slim edge of rationality he still possessed, thinking past this nightmare and on to the other side of it. If he survived, there had to be a change of game plan. He had been sitting on the sidelines long enough and waiting for the coach to send him in. Somewhere along the line, the coach had lost his playbook, and the team was getting murdered out there, right before his very eyes. And Frank Spinoza was not waiting any longer. If he lived — when he got out of this — he would sure as hell be making waves. A tidal wave that could be felt across the frigging ocean... in the streets of Tokyo.