Bolan's soul shuddered with the memory of it and he asked himself for the thousandth time why it had to happen to a sweet and harmless kid like Evie. Then he shook Evie Clifford out of his mind and returned again to the problems of the living.

In her place, he began establishing a rationale for Gambella. The guy either had the girls or he didn't. Either he got to them, or he could notget to them, or he decided againstsnatching them. How would a smart Capohandle the information he'd rung out of Evie?

Bolan damned himself for not having the foresight to establish a contact schedule with Paula during that final conversation. Bolan did not have the personnel resources to check out every hotel in Manhattan, not even the most obvious ones. Gambella did have. If he missed the girls at their apartment, he could damn soon cover every hotel in the city.

But did Gambella really want the girls? Did he actually needthem? Bolan knew what hewould do in Gambella's place. He would not touch those girls, not right away. First he'd put them under close surveillance, he'd bug their apartment, their salon and their telephones, he'd stake-out their home and their place of work, he'd get a feel into everyone who knew them and the places they went — then he'd just sit back and wait for Bolan to show.

And if the pigeon did not come along in a reasonable time, thenhe would go ahead and snatch the girls, and he'd find a way to let Bolan know that he had them, and he'd challenge the guy to come and get them before he made turkeys out of them.

Yes, that would be the strategy. The enemy knew Bolan as well as Bolan knew them. He had to figure that. They knew that he would not run away and leave his friends at the mercy of the turkeymakers.

Okay, so how about a rationale for the quarry? How would a smart Executioner counter such a strategy? That problem was complicated, of course, by the knowledge that this was no mere game of chess. The lives of two good women could be dangling in the balance and…

Bolan snapped off that line of thought and tried to align himself away from the emotional aspects. This was a battlefield problem in strategy and tactics, moves and countermoves — nothing else. He had to keep it that way, unless he wished to defeat himself.

Okay, so here's what a smart pigeon would do. First, he would assume that Gambella could havesnatched the girls — and then he would remove to every extent possible whatever options the other side might have. He would… Yes, by God, he would.

Bolan smiled grimly at the idea that was forming in his mind. Yes. It would be the most logical countermove.

He drove directly to Receiving Hospital and left the shrouded figure of Evie Clifford on an ambulance dock, in full view where he knew she would quickly be discovered, and he left a note folded into a mutilated little hand. The note identified her and explained what had happened to her — by whom, where, and why. It also contained a solemn promise that justice was going to be done — by whom, and against whom.

He pulled away to a discreet holding position to watch the scene through binoculars until the body was discovered. He saw the orderly or whatever recoil from the grisly find, and he watched the uniformed cop who came charging out of the emergency entrance, and he saw the cop pulling the note out of the dead fingers.

He made a mental note of the time, then he went away, his hands and his mind done with the beloved dead. He cruised slowly toward the apartment building, and when he arrived there he mentally tipped his hat to New York's Finest as he noted the police cruisers clustered about the garage entrance. He smiled as he went on by. If the Mafia had been hanging around, they weren't now. One of Gambella's options was gone. Maybe even all of them, if the cops should also luck onto Paula and Rachel to tuck them away into protective custody.

Again he noted the time, then stopped at a phone booth ten minutes away and called the Lindley apartment. A guarded male voice answered the second ring, and Bolan distinctly heard the extension phone also click into the line.

Bolan identified himself and asked to speak to the head cop. A whispered consultation followed, then another voice replied, "This is the head cop. What the hell are you up to, Bolan?"

"Are the girls there?" he asked.

"Why don't you come and see for yourself?"

"No way," Bolan replied coolly. "That's why I sent you. I figure Freddie has the joint sealed."

Bolan could hear the cop breathing and he could feelthe cogs moving in that mind. The heavy voice told him, "Yeah, I see your point. Look, fella…"

Bolan said, "Lindley and Silver are in deep trouble. This is no time for fine points of law. You talk to me and talk straight, or those girls could end up like the other one."

The cop sighed heavily into the mouthpiece and said, "Okay, Bolan. Temporary truce, with none of the finer points of the law. How do you know that Gambella was behind this gruesome bit of work? Do you have evidence? Do you admit to rubbing out the eight guys down at Kluman Brothers?"

Bolan growled, "Look, you must know I didn't call just to pass the time of day or to give you a telephone fix on me. So let's keep this simple and to the point."

"Okay, Bolan. Do you know the whereabouts of the two young women, Lindley and Silver?"

"No. I contacted them about three this morning and suggested they find a place to hide. I think I might have been too late. What does it look like there?"

The cop sighed again. He obviously was not enjoying his role as informant to a wanted criminal, but he carried on. "Not too good," he muttered. "The place is in disarray, stuff thrown around, a half-packed suitcase in the living room. It could be a snatch. Or it could be simply a hurried departure."

"Check the hotels," Bolan suggested. "And check Paula's Fashions, over in the — "

"Already did," the cop snapped back. "Car just reported back, the shop didn't open today."

Bolan said, "Find them, dammit," and he hung up.

Score another point for cops, he was thinking. They knew the Mafia mentality also, and they would be moving hell to find those girls.

So Gambella could still have those options. Bolan returned to the VW and headed into the next step of the counter-strategy.

At eleven o'clock on that chill Wednesday morning in New York, the Executioner invaded the Mafia heartland. Using information contained in his "poop book" some of it gathered from the CIG informants, MacArthur and Perugia, he "hit" three establishments in quick succession, all controlled by the Gambella Family, in a lightning blitz which left certain elements of the New York scene with a severe case of the shakes.

The first strike was against a "union hall" in the garment district. It was a phoney union, according to Bolan's information, existing on paper only with the profits extorted from workers and employers alike. It was owned and operated by one of Gambella's lieutenants.

Bolan double-parked outside the office building where the union was headquartered, took an elevator to the third floor, calmly walked into the office and shot dead at their desks the three officers who comprised the "governing board," then handed a marksman's medal to the stupefied female stenographer and walked out.

Twenty minutes later he struck again, this time at the Manhattan offices of Schwieberg, Fain, and Marksforth — purportedly an investment brokerage firm but actually the funnel through which Gambella's illicit wealth was spread into the legitimate business world. The firm went abruptly out of business at 11:22 A.M. that Wednesday in December, the partnership dissolved by mutual death, its records consumed by a fire of incendiary origin. Again, a tall man in army fatigues and an OD field jacket pressed a marksman's medal into the shaken palm of a female employee before he calmly departed the scene.