Something cold and deadly rose in Bernstein's throat and he raised the pistol, aiming it at Frank Spinoza's chest before the thought could translate unconscious images.

"You bastard!"

"Wait a minute, Abe..." And there was something in Spinoza's hand, a pistol, Bernstein saw, but he ignored it. Squeezing off a round, he watched the slug drill through Spinoza's throat, releasing bloody plumes that splattered down his shirt front, soaking through.

Another round, and one of Frank Spinoza's eyes exploded from its socket, hurtling across the room. The man was dead now but he would not fall.

Bernstein kept on firing, emptying his magazine into the standing corpse, until the point-blank impact threw him backward, stretched him out across the cluttered desk.

The other capos were reacting, alternately diving for some cover they could never hope to reach, or grasping after weapons of their own. The mercenaries opened fire, and Abe could hear the roar of Harry Thorson's .45 as he joined in. But Abe was heedless of the cross fire now, already kneeling down at Lucy's side and slicing at her bonds with a penknife he carried.

Of the mafiosi, only Johnny Cats had time to reach his weapon and employ it, squeezing off three rounds before converging streams of fire crucified him to the wall. The others died in varied attitudes of flight, devoid of honor, courage — everything but fear.

Abe Bernstein felt the tears as he released his granddaughter from her confinement in the straight-backed chair. His taste of victory had turned to something sour in his throat, threatening to gag him as he knelt there looking at her swollen bloodied face.

He told her he was sorry, begged her to forgive him, but she did not seem to hear. At last he motioned for a couple of his soldiers to assist him, and he lifted her out of the chair, got her onto her feet and held her there until she found the strength to stand.

"Let's get you home," he said, as if a change of scene would make things right again, erase the sights and memories of what had happened here this night. "Let's get you home," he said again, and knew she was not hearing him.

Abe Bernstein turned back toward the door, one arm around his grandchild's shoulders. He saw Jack Goldblume stretched out on the carpet, Harry Thorson bending over him and feeling for a pulse against his throat. The newsman's jacket, shirt and all were soaking crimson where the rounds from Johnny Cats's last burst had caught him, and Abe knew that it was hopeless long before the cowboy straightened up and shook his head.

"No good, Abe."

"Okay, we'll take him with the others. Hurry."

And they were not finished yet, he knew. There were still stragglers to be dealt with in the Gold Rush, and disposal teams to organize. Transporting all the bodies would be no small undertaking in itself, and Bernstein wondered where he might locate a garbage truck at this hour of the night.

No matter. First, he had to care for Lucy, make her understand that what had happened was an accident, a side effect of what he had achieved for all of them this night.

For all of Vegas.

It would take time, he knew, but she would understand once he explained it to her from the start. If he could take her back to the beginning, when the town was young and so was he, before the leeches came to fasten on him, draining off his life's blood.

They reached the escalator and Abe Bernstein forced himself to concentrate on here and now. Before he could tell Lucy anything, they had to get out of the hotel in one piece. And from the sounds downstairs, that might be difficult.

The old catch phrase came back to him — something they used to say all the time during the war. What was it, now?

"The difficult we do at once. The impossible takes a little longer."

Well, he had accomplished the impossible already here tonight. The difficult would prove no match for him, with victory already within his grasp.

Abe Bernstein checked the little automatic's load and slipped it back inside the waistband of his slacks as he followed his mercenaries onto the moving staircase. He could smell the battle now below them, as well as hear it echoing around the vast casino. Lucy vanished from his thoughts immediately, and the hunter reemerged, triumphant.

Bolan found the main casino of the Gold Rush shrouded in a pall of drifting battle smoke when he emerged out of the concourse into open view. The center of the room, along the line of vacant roulette tables, had become a lethal no-man's land. Fire teams were off to either side, intent on gaining ground and laying down a steady fusillade that ricocheted from slot machines and ceiling fixtures, gouging ragged chunks of plaster from the walls.

It seemed as if the hotel staff had risen up in arms against the tenants, with a line of bellhops and blue-uniformed security staked out on Bolan's left, the business suits and shirt-sleeves of the Mafia gunners on his right. And Bolan did not need a cast of characters to know that he was witnessing an overthrow of Frank Spinoza's hoodlum empire. To be replaced by what? Abe Bernstein and his good-old boys? A second-generation syndicate that Bernstein might have put together, waiting in the wings?

Bolan had no time for thinking futures. There was ample trouble in his present to keep him occupied.

And if he played his cards right it would matter little what the mafiosi or their opposition might be planning. The Executioner announced his entry to the battle with a pair of frag grenades among the hostile soldiers. He was already moving when the two eggs detonated into smoky thunder, less than a second apart, seeking cover from the answering fire that could not be far behind. They were still screaming out there, as he reached a bank of slots and hunkered down behind the one-armed bandits, waiting for the storm to break around him.

Downrange a Mafia gunner poked his head around the line of slots, angling for a shot when Bolan took his face off with a short burst from the Uzi. The guy's pistol went off aimlessly as he impacted with the carpet, one stray round careening off polished chrome above Bolan's head. The warrior moved, knowing that the surest way to die in combat was to make yourself a stationary target. He was virtually surrounded now, but neither side could be sure who he was or what his unexpected entry to the three-ring charnel circus might portend for their side. By the time they had an answer, Bolan planned to be on top of things, dealing from strength and calling the tune in their impromptu dance of death. He covered for himself with automatic fire and kept on moving, never pausing long enough for hostile guns to find him. More than one was silenced by the probing bursts from Bolan's stuttergun, and now the fire from one side to another had begun to falter, gunners hesitating as they tried a rapid battlefield assessment of the latest threat. Bolan could not give them time to think.

He plucked another frag can from his belt and yanked the pin, counting down the seconds to doomsday as he chose a target randomly and let the bomb fly. Across the narrow no-man's land, a crap table took flight, all four legs off the ground and levitating on a ball of flame before it settled back to earth in smoking ruins. In the wake of the explosion, Bolan heard the death screams mingling with the clash of small-arms fire and someone shouting for instructions from his crew chief.

He emptied the Uzi in one searing burst, saw two of the blue-uniformed security guards topple underneath the driving rain of parabellum hornets.

Swiftly he reloaded, moving out of there in search of other sanctuary before the hostiles could react.

He reached a blackjack table, overturned already in the heat of battle. He hurdled it, touching down behind the barricade in combat readiness. The warrior was prepared for anything — except, perhaps, to face the mafioso who already occupied that makeshift foxhole, gaping at him now from no more than three feet away, the pistol he extended in his right hand touching-close.