Yeah ... this mission would be just about point-blank.

The Diver sent three of his boys out to intercept the bread truck and another two to check-out the green van, then he sent the remaining palace guard scurrying through the house searching for bugs.

Ben Lucasi ran into the game room to caution everyone there to "keep quiet, stop talking, not a fucking word!" — then he snatched up a double-barrel shotgun and dashed toward the upstairs window where he'd spotted the suspicious-looking package.

He arrived there just in time to see the bread truck picking up speed for a run past the house.

Three of Diver's boys were chasing along beside it, waving pistols and shouting at one another.

A burst of fire from an automatic weapon lanced away from the cab of the truck and the three boys went down sliding in their own blood.

The truck had slowed again, almost coming to a complete halt near the front of the property, and the automatic-weapon fire was sweeping into the house itself as that damned guy down there methodically raked the whole joint. Window glass was breaking and crashing all over; Lucasi could hear yelling and stampeding feet as his visitors sought cover. Above it all, the loud commands of big Diver could be heard as the veteran house captain tried to get his forces deployed against the unexpected assault.

Without even realizing what a foolish thing he was doing, Lucasi shattered his window with the shotgun, leaned out, and let go with both barrels into that bread truck.

The double ba-loom of his own retort was echoed instantly far away by the powerful reports from a big-game piece. Something tore the shotgun out of Lucasi's grasp and sent it spinning to the ground; something else smacked into the window frame a fraction of an inch from his eyes and tore a foot of it away.

Lucasi fell back quickly into the safety of the room, his hands still tingling from the hit on his shotgun, and he knew that he'd come as close to sudden death as he ever wanted to get.

He scrambled down the stairway yelling, "Diver! Diver!"

But the Diver was already outside, leading his pack of triggermen in a hard run across the yard, taking the battle exactly where Mack Bolan probably wanted it.

"Don't go out there!" Lucasi wailed.

Too late.

Another rattling sound from up the street signalled the entrance of a second automatic weapon into the battle, and the rolling cra-acks of that big-game piece were now coming end-to-end, almost sounding as one.

Yeah, Lucasi knew it. It was too damn late now.

Bolan had been watching for a response to Blancanales' stutter-pistol attack, and he saw the shotgun the moment it presented itself outside that upstairs window.

He immediately acquired that target in his cross-hairs and sighed into the squeeze-off, realizing as he did so that he was at least a heartbeat behind the other guy's trigger. His own piece bucked into his shoulder at the same instant that the report from the shotgun reached him; he rode the recoil and hung into the eyepiece for another quick round into the same general target area.

The intense magnification of the big scope provided a field of vision measuring in inches but he saw the shotgun take the hit and spin away, and he had a milli-second glimpse of Ben Lucasi's frightened visage jerking away from a splintering windowframe.

He paused then for an area-evaluation with the binoculars.

Blancanales had abandoned the bread truck. Apparently the shotgun blast had disabled the vehicle.

Two men were in the street, about midway between the house and Schwarz's position with the warwagon. At the moment they seemed to be torn between their original assignment and the obvious need for their presence back at the house.

Bolan barked into the shoulder-phone, "Pol, Gadgets, report!"

Blancanales came in immediately, a bit winded, "I'm grounded, two o'clock from the front of the house, behind the little rock wall."

"I'm done," Gadgets announced calmly. "Get ready, Pol, I'll pick you up."

"Negative!" Bolan commanded. "You do a one-eighty and haul out of there. I'll spring the Politician."

"Too late," Schwarz replied. "Here come the reserves."

Bolan snarled, "It still goes. You break and haul — backwards!"

"Aye aye."

"I'm okay," Blancanales assured everybody.

With his naked eye Bolan could see that the Politician would not be "okay" for long.

A swarm of hardmen were pouring out of the house and making a cautious advance toward the street.

As he was leaning into his eyepiece, he heard the stutter of Schwarz's weapon and got a peripheral glimpse of the two men in the street as they dived for cover. One of them did not dive quite soon enough; Bolan saw him flop and roll, then he sighed into his own targets. Gadgets, he knew, could take care of himself.

As for those guys down there in that yard ... at this range, with this piece, it was almost a shame. Even scrambling, they were sitting ducks.

He was in a tight spot, and the Politician damn well knew it.

The little NATO machine pistol had jammed on him and there was no time to work on it. He had a damn revolver and six lousy rounds between him and about fifteen guys who were moving across that lawn over there.

His closest help was damn near one hundred yards away, and he had been ordereed out of the area.

The Sarge, of course, was laying-in with the big precision piece — and that fact would not prove at all comforting to anyone moving into those cross-hairs.

Blancanales had confidence in Bolan. If the guy said he'd spring him, then he'd spring him. Still ... this was not the most enviable of all possible circumstances for a life-loving dude like Rosario Blancanales. And he had not seen the Sarge at work for quite awhile. A guy, even a Mack Bolan, could sometimes lose his numbers.

He watched a group of hardmen splinter off from the main force and start a movement toward Schwarz in the warwagon just as Gadgets opened fire on the two guys already up there. Then the big booms from Bolan's Weatherby began rocking the air again.

The guy could sure tickle a trigger.

Hell, he was firing from about three blocks away but those people over there were going down like clockwork. Blancanales watched them depart the field of combat forever — one, two, three, four — like a cadence count — and those who were left were already beginning to get a whole new slant on the art of warfare.

Some guy was standing in a doorway over there and screaming at them to get back inside.

Bolan's cool voice came through his shoulder-phone then: "Make your move, Pol. Fall back to the next street behind you and hold there. Gadgets, circle around and pick him up."

"Aye, aye," said Gadgets.

"Wilco," Blancanales responded, sighing.

Hell. He'd known all along that the Sarge would spring him. He hadn't lost any damn numbers.

The big question now, of course, was could the Sarge spring himself.

The wail of police sirens was beginning to crowd the area, boring in from several directions.

Two more big booms erupted from that distant firing-drop and Blancanales, glancing over his shoulder, saw the bread truck explode into flames.

He grinned, aware that Bolan was simply adding a confusion-factor to the scene.

Sure. The guy would spring himself.