Lucy was silent now. She watched his face with something close to apprehension in her eyes.

"Your grandfather's casino," Bolan finished.

"Jack Goldblume used to run the PR there."

"I know all that," she said. "So what?"

"So, maybe nothing. Maybe I don't buy coincidence."

"You think that my grandfather got me this job?"

Bolan shrugged.

"Well, you're wrong, mister," she snapped. "I'm a damned good reporter. There were other offers when I graduated, other opportunities. I picked the Beacon and Las Vegas. Me. I like it here, okay?" She was convincing, sure, and Bolan wanted to believe her. But even if she was leveling, it did not mean she knew the full extent of what was going on behind the scenes.

"Who came up with the idea for a Mafia series?" Bolan asked her.

Lucy frowned and somehow it only made her more attractive.

"It just came down," she answered. "I guess the city editor..."

"Or Goldblume?"

She thought about it briefly, nodding.

"Maybe. He's involved in every aspect of the paper. What's the difference?"

Bolan answered her with a question of his own.

"If you were trying to get rid of someone like Minotte or Spinoza, how would you go about it?"

She paled briefly as the memories of last night came flooding back on her again.

"I'd say the Bruce Lee fan club had a fairly workable idea," she said at last.

"Agreed. But let's suppose you're trying to avoid a shooting war. What then?"

"I don't know. Set him up, I guess. Indict him on some charge." An idea clicked inside the tousled head, and Lucy's mouth was dry when she continued. "Or you could turn the spotlight on him. Make him vulnerable... run him out of town with bad publicity."

"It's worked before," the soldier told her.

She saw where he was going now and did not like it.

Verbally, she tried to head him off.

"What's wrong with that?" she challenged. "They should be driven out of town."

"I'm less concerned with method than with motive."

"Obviously."

Bolan took the jab for what it was and let it pass, forging ahead in hypotheticals.

"Suppose you had a score to settle, from the old days. Suppose that someone ripped you off years earlier, and now you've got a chance to make it right, with interest."

Lucy Bernstein's voice became indignant.

"This is nonsense. I don't understand..."

"I think you do," he told her softly.

"Well, it doesn't matter what you think. My grandfather... Jack Goldblume... they're not gangsters like Spinoza. They're both respected businessmen." He did not answer. In the silence, she continued speaking, and if Bolan read her tone correctly she was trying to persuade herself now. "Do you know how much money my grandfather gave to charity this year?" she asked him. "Last year? How much Jack Goldblume spent on civic service programs?""

"Where'd it all come from, I wonder?"

"God damn you!"

"He has," Bolan told her simply, rising from the straight-backed chair and stretching his legs. "You may still have a chance. Get dressed."

"Where are you taking me?" she demanded.

"I've got a friend who specializes in providing sanctuary, more or less official."

There were tears glistening in her eyes, but the voice was tough, unyielding.

"Wait up there, mister. I'm a big girl now. I've got a job, responsibilities..."

A big girl, right, and Bolan did not need to be reminded of the fact.

"You're marked," he told her coldly. "Show up for work with Bob Minotte's family on the hunt, and your next deadline will be just that."

She winced at the play on words and seemed about to answer, but she kept it to herself.

"Get dressed," he said again. "We're out of time."

The clock was running, and Bolan felt the fourthdown pressure without knowing yet exactly what or where his goal might be. The puzzle was expanding and he had more jumbled jigsaw pieces in his hand.

Lucy Bernstein had a puzzle of her own to deal with now — her own dilemma of the heart and soul. She had some private problems to resolve. There would not be an easy answer for her, Bolan knew. But then, a big girl had to live with that reality. The Executioner had long ago adjusted to the grim reality of living in the hellgrounds. He knew there were no easy answers in the trenches, ever — and no respite from the pressure, either.

He would drop the lady off with Tommy Anders, trust the comic and his people to secure Lucy Bernstein for the duration of his Vegas strike. Whichever way it went, the campaign would be short and decisive. But the intervening time would give Anders a chance to pick her brain a little. Anything he might be able to extract would be a bonus. As for Bolan, he was already thinking toward the next engagement with an enemy who kept on changing shapes and faces, multiplying. Somewhere soon the answer would walk up to him and tap him on the shoulder. Now, the only problem was that when it came it might be carrying a knife to plant between the Executioner's shoulder blades.

Las Vegas is a city of illusion, and Bolan was not sure that anything he had seen so far was real.

No, scratch that.

He had seen real death, for damn sure. No way to mistake it for show biz make-believe.

He lived in a universe where stark reality was everything. The only avenue of escape from grim relentless truth was a parabellum mangler through the brain.

And he resided in the charnel universe by choice, damn right. Along with others like Brognola and Tommy Anders — the combatants who elected to spend their season in hell here on earth.

No one had drafted warrior Bolan for this holy war. He had elected to provide his body and his soul, a living sacrifice. But Lucy Bernstein.

She was something else again.

A big girl, right, who might not get much older if allowed to wander pell-mell through the battlefields of Bolan's war. Accustomed to the newsroom she was unfamiliar with the no-rules rules of war, and there was no damned time to train her in the martial arts that she would need to eke out a survival in the trenches.

Let the woman find her peace or purgatory in her own way, her own time. Mack Bolan had already found his course of action and he was proceeding with it, undeterred and undetoured by any of Glitter City's myriad distractions.

There were lots of big girls out there, right. And there were lots of big guns, too.

Right now most of them were not aimed at Bolan, but the coming hours would change all that. The Executioner was counting on it.

Frank Spinoza finished loading the clip for his Browning Hi-Power automatic pistol and snapped it into the pistol grip, working the weapon's slide to chamber up a live one. He eased down the hammer and set the safety, enjoying the weight of the loaded gun in his hand. Reluctantly he reached out to stow it in the top desk drawer, then reconsidered, slipping it inside the waistband of his slacks, on the left, where it was hidden underneath his jacket. The solid weight of it felt good there against his ribs.

For the first time since that afternoon Spinoza felt secure, sitting there behind his massive desk inside the private office. The gun was part of it, he knew. And the layout of the office helped. No windows.

He had been expecting Paulie Vaccarelli's knock, and even so, it made him jump involuntarily. Spinoza gripped the padded arms of his swivel chair, willing himself to relax with an effort.

"Come ahead," he ordered.

The houseman stepped inside, the door ajar behind him and his body sealing off the opening. His rugged face seemed out of balance now with a bulky bandage on his cheek across the wound he received from flying window glass.

Spinoza wondered if he would ever stand before another open window totally at ease, without feeling fear in the pit of his stomach.