"I'll ask you one more time," he said, and there was no mistaking the menace in his tone.

"Go to hell."

He hit her with his open palm, the shock of it exploding up his arm with stunning force. Her head rocked back, blood spurting from her nose, and when she opened her eyes again she had the dazed expression of a shell-shock victim. Frank Spinoza gave her time to clear her head before he stuck the pistol in her face and cocked the hammer.

"One last time," he told her now. "I want some answers and you'd better be convincing." He was giddy with the power of the moment, knowing that he could do anything he wanted to with this one. He could blow her head off, throw her on the desk and take her then and there with all the others watching... anything.

The others.

When he finished with the woman, he had plans for them as well. There would be rounds enough inside the Browning's magazine for everyone. A clean sweep, sure, and too long overdue.

The capo of Las Vegas smiled, a reptile's grimace, full of hunger unfulfilled.

Bolan cleared the service area and made his way in the direction of the large casino proper, moving cautiously, scanning the corridors to either side of him. He held the Mini-Uzi ready, waiting to respond to any hostile challenge, knowing that the savages were all around him now. The problem would be finding them, rooting them out and destroying them without walking into an ambush.

And he found them thirty feet along the corridor as he was passing by an office doorway with the legend Private painted on it. As he passed the door it swung open and a startled face confronted him, mouth working silently for several seconds as the brain attempted to translate its silent warning into sound.

The guy recovered instantly at sight of Bolan's rising Uzi. He leaped backward, slamming the door behind him and fumbling with the locking mechanism. And he had his voice back now, alerting anyone in earshot to the danger of an armed intruder in their midst. Bolan stitched a burst across the flimsy door, then hit it with a flying kick that tore the lock apart, following through into a diving shoulder roll. He caught a glimpse of hardman number one slumped back against a filing cabinet, clutching at the bloody ruin of his punctured abdomen. Others were unloading on him now with handguns, and he let the dying take care of themselves.

Two of them were crouched behind a massive metal desk, taking turns at popping up to fire in his direction. A third was holed up in a tiny back room that appeared to serve as combination lounge and storeroom. Bolan pinned the two desk gunners down with probing fire and scuttled backward to the cover of another unattended desk that faced their sanctuary from across the room.

It was a weak position, right, with space beneath the desk for ricochets to find him if they started thinking straight instead of firing out of reflex. Worse, they had the chance to pin him down until sufficient reinforcements could arrive to rush him.

The Executioner would have to move swiftly if he meant to stay alive. Another moment might be all the time he had.

Bolan sprang a frag grenade from his combat harness, pulled the pin and let it fly, already counting down. The pitch was perfect, even under fire, deflecting off metal filing cabinets to drop down behind the desk, between the hostile gunners in their little foxhole.

"What the..." And that was all before the blast eclipsed their screaming voices, toppling the desk and spreading both of them across the walls like lumpy red wallpaper. A piece of shrapnel clipped the wounded gunner where he stood transfixed for a moment.

Then he slid into the graceless sprawl of death.

Three down and number four was screaming in his little pantry hideaway, half-blinded by the smoke and deafened by the harsh concussion of the blast. He lost it, lurching up and out of cover, firing blindly as he cleared the narrow doorway with no more idea of where his target was than if he had been shooting at the moon.

Bolan tracked him through the doorway, stroking off a three-round burst that picked the gunner off his feet and twisted him around, a human corkscrew, airborne, sprawling back across the smoking desk.

Before the body finished twitching, the Executioner was up and out of there, already moving back along the corridor to the casino, searching for the action. And it was just ahead of him, the Executioner could hear it now, the jangle of the play replaced now by the pop and crackle of small-arms fire.

Someone had engaged the enemy in there, and they were not firing at him — at least not yet.

Mack Bolan dropped the Uzi's magazine and snapped a fresh one into place, no longer walking now, but jogging toward the sounds of battle.

They had started the bloodfeast without him but the Executioner was coming. Better late than never, right.

He was one of the invited guests whether the hosts were currently aware of it or not.

The Executioner had been invited by the Universe.

Abe Bernstein reached inside his jacket, pulling out the short slim automatic pistol from his waistband. He took a moment, checking out the action, waiting while old Harry Thorson slid a new clip into the receiver of his Army-model .45.

They had regrouped for the assault on Frank Spinoza's penthouse, Bernstein refusing to take any chances when they had come so far and dared so much to make it work. They would be done with it tonight or none of them could count on a tomorrow — in Las Vegas or anywhere. If Frank Spinoza or another of the capos in there managed to escape with news of what Abe Bernstein had accomplished at the Gold Rush, they could write it off as a total loss.

"All set?" He glanced around and noticed that Jack Goldblume held his pistol pointed to the floor as if he was afraid it might go off and hurt someone. Old Jack was looking green around the gills, as if the sights that he had witnessed there that evening had been almost more than he could stomach. Almost, but not entirely. He was with them still, and Bernstein meant to make sure that he stayed there — at least until they finished with Spinoza and the others. He still needed the Beacon, a sympathetic press, to help cover their tracks when they were finished. Later, when the smoke had cleared and the dust of battle settled... Well, Jack Goldblume was looking more expendable by the moment.

Abe's prey was in there, waiting for him now. Not taking any chances, he had risked a phone call from the last suite they had visited, putting on his best solicitous flunky's voice and asking Frank if there was anything that he could do for any of them.

Coffee? Liquor? Anything at all? Spinoza had cut him off, but not before Abe had heard the other voices in the background, jabbering excitedly together, arguing in angry tones. Liguori.

Catalanotte.

Dioguardi.

A clean sweep, bet your ass.

"Let's go."

He nodded to the pair of mercenaries waiting by the doorway to the penthouse, and they stepped in front of it, their silenced Ingrams leveled from the waist. One of them hit the locking mechanism with a short precision burst and they followed through, the others crowding in behind them, Bernstein jockeying into a firing-line position, letting Thorson and Jack Goldblume ride his coattails.

And his men were under orders not to fire until he gave the order. One last precaution, time to let him verify the targets before the heads began to roll.

He stood there gaping in amazement and shock at the tableau laid out before his eyes. At first the visual impulse made no sense, and then he realized that it was no illusion.

Bernstein saw the woman seated in the chair with her hands bound behind her. He made the recognition through a veil of caking blood that ran down from her nose, her lips, a cut above one eye. Spinoza stood above her, one fist poised to strike again. Behind him the other capos ranged around the desk, their enjoyment of the sport interrupted by the intrusion.