And what about Mack Bolan? Hadn't he become brutalized as well? Yes. Sure he had. But that realization did not change anything. The whole thing was a point of survival, and every man had to survive his own way. Brutalized men survived through brutality, or failed through it. If another Shepherd came, Bolan would kill him — and if a Mafiosocame, Bolan would kill him too.

Suppose he had tried to reasonwith those devil dogs that came on him from the blackness of night? Who would be lying there, torn and dead, a survival failure? Bolan knew who, and he knew that a guy would get the same results trying to reason with a Mafioso. You didn't reason with brutes, you simply killed them. Many people had tried to co-exist with the Mafia, and the Mafia had left them torn and bleeding. Well — Bolan had his own way of surviving, and it was theirway, and the main difference between them lay in Bolan's ability to use it faster and better. He knew that he would remain alive only so long as that difference existed.

Now he had decided that there were no more dogs, or they would have been along by now. He went on, warily continued the soft probe, and he saw many interesting things which went into his mental file.

Then he withdrew, took the dead dogs with him and buried them beside the VW, and laid his plans for another day as he made the long drive back to Manhattan.

He knew that hardsite now, he knew its defenses and its weaknesses, and he knew how to grind it to powder. And one day very soon he would do just that.

The hour was late and the roads were practically deserted in a rapidly developing snowstorm. On a sudden impulse, Bolan took the interchange into the Cross Island Expressway for a swing through the Bronx. It was about as good a way as any to get to Manhattan, at this late hour, and Bolan found himself being drawn back to the neighborhood of Sam the Bomber. He felt curiously frustrated and at loose ends with himself, as though the day somehow should not be allowed to end on the note he'd taken with him from Stoney Lodge. Sam the Bomber represented an item of unfinished business, a loose end that needed tucking in.

Bolan cruised past the house that Human Engineering had restored and saw nothing but a faint nightlight to the rear, then he drove on into the next block and found a place to leave the VW. The snowflakes were wet and bloated and being pushed by a respectable wind, yet Bolan went into it with nothing to keep him warm but the Beretta and the thermal suit.

New glass had replaced the mess of the earlier hit; all was still and dead at the front of the house. Bolan went on around the side and into drifting snow and silence and darkness, reaching the rear just as a heavy car came whining slowly up the alley, wheels spinning with too much power versus too little traction. Headlamps arced across and momentarily illuminated the rear of Chianti's house, then abruptly disappeared as the car wheeled into a garage. Bolan moved swiftly across the open area and reached the corner of the garage just as the engine was silenced.

A door slammed, then another, and a muffled voice said something in an impatient tone. A light went on inside the garage and a roller-door slid to a close, then a floodlight came on and illuminated the area between the garage and the house. Bolan pressed into the shadows and waited.

Another rumble of voices, a deep male basso voicing a complaint about the weather and having to drive in it, another one saying something with regards to what had to be expected at this time of year. Then a side door opened and a big guy in a trench coat emerged, stepping directly in front of Bolan. The butt of the Beretta slammed into the base of the big guy's skull and he pitched forward into the snow with a soft grunt.

Sam the Bomber appeared in the open doorway. He said, "Dammit, Al, I toldyou to watch your…" And then he saw Bolan, and the wicked black Beretta, and he said, inanely, "Oh hell, I thought he slipped."

Bolan told him, "You both slipped, Sam."

Then a third person stepped into the light and looked Bolan over in a cool appraisal, and Bolan knew an impulse to turn around and walk away from there. She was an older version of Valentina, the girl he had loved and left in Pittsfield so many lifetimes ago, and she was giving him that same disapproving look which Val had used on him from time to time.

She saw the Beretta, of course, and there was little doubt that she knew who Bolan was and why he was there. But she cooled it, and told him in a chatty tone,

"Such a night to be out, and you in little more than underwear. I told Sam we could go some other night, Thursday maybe, but you would have thought tonight was the last chance he would ever have. So we drove clear to Connecticut just to see the children, and in this weather, and we just saw them Sunday."

She was watching Bolan's face, and he had to look away from those eyes; he knew what she was telling him, and he did not wish to offer her any false comfort.

Chianti told her, "Go on in the house, Theresa."

She was maybe forty, and way out of Sam's class if Bolan was any judge. But then, Val had been out of Bolan's class, too — yet she had prayed over him and wept over him and begged him to just let her love him.

Bolan was wondering if Theresa prayed and wept over her Sam.

She was looking right past the Beretta and into Bolan's eyes as she told her husband, "Why don't you ask your friend in out of the snow and I'll put on some coffee."

Chianti said, "Yeah, that's a good idea, Theresa. You go put on the coffee. We'll be along in a minute."

Bolan had not spoken since that first terse announcement to Sam the Bomber. He was looking at Theresa Chianti but he was seeing and thinking of Valentina, dear tender Val with the guts of a Viking and the heart of an angel — and he had not thought of her for a long time, would notthink of her. He did not want to think of Sam the Bomber's wife either. This was a side of the wars he had always diligently avoided; Bolan did not like to think of weeping widows.

Now he spoke, and he told the composed little woman, "It's a good night for coffee, Mrs. Chianti."

Her eyes sparkled and she threw a quick glance at her husband, a glance that she must have known might have to last her a lifetime, and she smiled at Bolan and her gaze lingered for a moment on the fallen bodyguard, and then she went toward the house.

Sam murmured, "Hold it just a minute, huh Bolan? Until she gets inside."

Bolan held it. He said, "I'm sorry about the lady, Sam."

The doomed man sighed and replied, "Me too. Uh, I don't guess you'd like to take me somewheres else for it. I mean, I'd sure rather Theresa didn't have to see it."

The snow was swirling between them in sticky gobs and clustering about Sam's face and melting and running down in rivulets. The Beretta and Bolan's gun hand were beginning to show an accumulation also, but that hand had not wavered.

Now the black blaster waggled ever so faintly and Bolan said, "Are you packing, Sam?"

Chianti nodded his head. "In my belt, left side."

"So use two fingers of your left hand and get rid of it."

The Mafioso'sface showed that he thought his request was to be granted. He did as he was told, dropping a snubnosed .38 into the snow at his feet.

The weather was not bothering the Executioner, but a spreading coldness was centering in his chest, deep inside. He told the contractor's contractor, "You need to retire, Sam."

"I been thinking about that," came the somber reply.

The woman had reached the house. A light came on, in what was obviously the kitchen, and Bolan could see her standing there at the window, hands clasped in front of her. He told Chianti, "If I were you, I'd stop thinking about it, and I'd do it."