A sober and troubled electronics expert stored his surveillance tapes in a fireproof box and turned a thoughtful frown to his friend, the Executioner.

"So now what?" he asked, sighing. "So now the siege is ended," Bolan replied quietly.

"You mean we pack up and walk away," Blancanales said.

"No. We storm the city."

"Oh, well...." The Politician scratched his nose, glanced at Schwarz, and said, "What's the first target?"

"The tar pits," Bolan told them.

"The tar pits?"

"Yeah." Bolan was buckling into his AutoMag.

"You mean like the LaBrea tar pits, up in L.A.?"

"Something like that," Bolan said. "Only these are invisible.''

Schwarz and Blancanales exchanged puzzled glances. They were accustomed to Bolan's sometimes cryptic utterances, but this one left them blank.

"They've dug bones of woolly mammoths and I think dinosaurs out of LaBrea," Schwarz commented.

"We're after bigger game than that," the Executioner assured his crew.

"It's still a rescue mission?" Blancanales wanted to know.

"That," Bolan replied, "is exactly what it is."

13

The link

She was young, beautiful, married to one of San Diego's most illustrious citizens, and — according to her own immodest claim in a telephone conversation with Lisa Winters — she had "balled every hood in this town ... and a few over in Mexico."

Her hair was shades of red and hung in a full drop to a point just below her shoulders. The eyes were emerald-hued, but lacked sparkle. The body was long and shapely with soft curves that flowed one into the other beneath velvet-textured skin. A true redhead, the sun apparently was not kind to her; she was glistening and greasy with protective oils and lotions. She wore a micro-bikini which did not quite conceal the fringes of the silky growth of hair at the base of her soft little tummy.

She was topless — one of those who could get away with it admirably.

With all that, if Bolan had ever seen a truly turned-off young woman, then this was the one.

She was sprawled upon her back on a large beach towel, head and shoulders supported by a plastic pillow, staring at him with something less than curiosity. A large Doberman, identical to the dogs at the Winters place, sat faithfully at her feet and regarded Bolan with that same detachment.

Needlessly, it seemed, she commanded the dog, "Thunder, stay." Then she told the intruder, "This is a private beach."

Bolan replied, "I know."

Except for the hat, he was dressed in the seagoing togs he'd acquired for the hit on Danger's Folly. The AutoMag was snugged into a shoulder holster beneath his left arm. The big piece made anoticeable bulge in his jacket, but this was the desired effect.

She was looking him over with a shade of interest now.

"You can be prosecuted for trespassing," Maxwell Thornton's wife informed the Executioner.

He said, "I'll risk it."

She sat up, sending the undraped chest a'jiggling, and leaned forward to grab a handful of the dog's coat. "Thunder is my bodyguard," she declared in that same listless tone. "A word from me and he'll be at your throat."

Beneath that turned-off exterior, the girl was frightened. Bolan knew this by the way the dog was beginning to tense and strain. A good dog could sense its owner's concealed emotions.

He told her, "Thunder must be a real comfort. Too bad."

The dog was off his fanny now, legs beneath him in a low crouch, lips curling upward to show this intruder how impressive his fangs were.

After a brief silence, the girl asked, "What's too bad?"

"Too bad that Howlie couldn't get the same sense of security from Thunder's brothers."

That one penetrated, immediately.

She let go of the Doberman and cried, "Thunder, hit!"

The big fellow's trained reaction was instantaneous and dramatic. The soft sand gave him a little trouble, but just a little, and he left the ground with all four feet airborne, snarling into the conditioned-response attack, the great mouth fully open and grinding into that contact with human flesh.

It is impossible to depict a true guard-dog attack in one of those staged presentations for movies or television. The Hollywood dogs are trained to simulate an attack and there is no way to fake the actual fury and viciousness of a true guard-dog response to a kill command.

These impressive fellows do not passively wrestle about with their jaws clamped lightly around a guy's forearm. They explode into a writhing juggernaut of fury unleashed, slashing and ripping with fang and claw, and it is a rare man who can bare-handedly stand up to such an assault.

Mack Bolan was a rare man. He had read the attack, and he'd been waiting for it. His jump-off was synchronized with that of the dog as he pivoted inside and under the scrambling leap. He popped him in the throat with everything he could put behind a balled fist and rammed a knee into the belly as the Doberman fell back onto his hind legs.

It was a matter of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, with the immovable object getting the best shots in.

The Doberman's legs buckled. The big head drooped toward the sand as he alternately coughed and retched, struggling to draw air with his temporarily paralyzed respiratory system.

He was all out of fight, for the moment.

Bolan sprung the AutoMag and aimed it at the Doberman's head. "Call him off," he warned the woman.

It had all occurred so quickly that the woman's hand was still poised in the air where she had released the dog. Those emerald eyes did not so much as flicker as she issued the soft command. "Thunder, break."

The monster-dog seemed grateful to be relieved of his responsibilities. He crawled toward the woman, whining and still fighting for breath,

Bolan sheathed the AutoMag and knelt beside the dog to rub his throat and massage the quivering ribcage.

Something was coming alive in Marsha Thornton's dead eyes as she watched the tall man with the impassive face stroke the suffering animal. She murmured, "I wouldn't believe that if I hadn't seen it. I was assured that Thunder would protect me from a grizzly bear."

Bolan said, "He would."

His jacket was ripped and he was bleeding slightly from a fang-graze on his hand.

The woman rolled onto her knees and stood up. "Come on up to the house," she suggested. "I'll put something on that cut."

The Doberman was licking the fingers which had defeated him, and Bolan was thinking what a shame it was to misuse a dog this way. Man's oldest friend in the animal world, converted to a living robot, programmed to kill upon command.

The dog and Mack Bolan had a great deal in common — Bolan realized that. He'd pondered the question after a run-in with a couple of German Shepherds during the New York battle. And he'd decided then that there was a difference — subtle but important — between himself and the killer dog.

The dogs killed because they were conditioned to accept a command to do so. In a dog's world it was a sort of a morality to be obedient to his master's desires. Actually, Bolan knew, guard-dogs killed because they had to kill. There was no mental or moral alternative.

Bolan did not have to kill.

He killed because he could— and because, like the dogs, there was no mental or moral alternative.

So, yeah, he had a lot in common with the Doberman — but with a difference. A very important difference.

He pushed the thing from his mind and followed Marsha Thornton to her beach house, the Doberman huffing along at his side.

It seemed that he had made a conquest.

If all went well, he would very soon make another.

While Bolan cultivated the distaff side of the House of Thornton, Schwarz and Blancanales invaded an impressively modern skyscraper in downtown San Diego for a call upon the master himself.


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