Bolan shrugged. "I'm no psychologist. But it's a thought."

"Yes, isn't it," she agreed.

There was a definite luster in the girl's eyes now.

Bolan didn't want to spoil it, but he had to ask her. "Was Lisa Winters in that party — the boat trip to Ensenada?"

She wet her lips and told him, "Well, you'd have to ask her about that."

He replied, "Okay. I will."

She swiveled about and wrapped her arms about Bolan's neck in one swift motion, kissed him lightly on the mouth, then released him.

"Five minutes ago," she said breathlessly, "I was starved half to death. And hating myself for it. I'm not hungry now. You'd better go while you can."

"I'll want a rain check on about an hour of your time, at my demand," he told her. "And it has nothing to do with hunger."

"You've got it," she assured him. "Now split, before my monster awakens."

Bolan believed her.

And he split.

But his monster had already awakened, and he was hungry as hell.

"Howlie had been crumbling for months," Blancanales reported. "They got into him on little stuff, nickle and dime jazz, during his GHQ stint at Saigon. I guess he was a little bitter over the deal he got, you know, and he was ripe for the approach. You know how a guy like Howlin' Harlan must have felt at a logistics desk, God's sake."

"Yeah," Bolan agreed.

"Anyway, he was in a position to set them up for dumping contraband into the PX and service club circuits. Thornton was dragged into it from this end, via his transportation outfits. He even hijacked some of his own trucks and collected insurance on the loss. Anyway, he was able to provide bonafide shipping orders and such for the loot and he even had a couple of freighters in the play. They were running everything from shaving lotion to hootch. According to Thornton, Southeast Asia, for awhile there, was the prime dumping grounds for the hijack rings."

"Cute," Bolan commented.

"Yeh. When these guys do something, they do it big, don't they. Well, according to Thornton, he wasn't getting that much out of it. He figured the risk exceeded the profits, most of which was going to the mob anyway. But they had it into him, and he had to go along."

"What were you saying about Howlie?" Bolan reminded him.

"Well, he was nickle-and-diming it during his last few months at Saigon. After his retirement, Thornton helped him set up here. Thornton swears it and I don't know why he'd want to He about it now ... Howlie didn't know what he was getting into, not at first. Oh sure, he knew he was selling his influence at the Pentagon. I guess they all do it, most of these retired officers. Why not? It's legal, right? And it's about the only way they can make a military career pay off when things have gone sour for them. Who needs a guy who has spent his whole life deploying troops around a battlefield, right?"

"Go on," Bolan prodded.

Schwarz took it from there. "You know what a feeder horn is, Sarge? It's part of a radio transmission system, sort of like microwave but still operating at radio frequencies. It puts out a controlled emission that's beamed like a spotlight, only it's tighter than any spotlight. It's line-of-sight stuff. The other end of the system uses a dish-antenna for receiving, and you have to shoot directly into the dish or there's no reception."

"Radio point-blank," Bolan commented. "We had them in 'Nam."

"Right. Data links for radar, electronic counter-measures."

"Ultra-sophisticated," Blancanales put in.

"Absolutely," Schwarz agreed. "I have no idea what a rig like that costs, but you can bet it's mighty heavy. You can set them up for mobile use, and that gets even costlier. Besides that, if you're going to own a system like that then you've got to have people who know how to operate and maintain it. Now why. ..." He paused, grinned, and swiped at his nose with a balled fist. "Why would you think an outfit like the Mafia would want a million-dollar toy like that?"

Bolan showed the electronics expert a sober smile and said, "Data link, right?"

"Right."

"With Agua Caliente just a few miles across the border."

Schwarz looked disappointed. Bolan had spoiled his punch line. "That's it," he said. "The track down there has a complete foreign book betting service for tracks all over the world. These dummies are trying to set up a foolproof link between Mexico and Vegas. At mountain peak to mountain peak line-of-sight, do you know how many feeder-horn relays they'd have to have?"

Bolan commented, "They think big, Gadgets." He shrugged his shoulders. "And if it's costing them nothing...."

"Well yeah, but God what they have to go through to get the stuff. That's what finally stuck in Howlie's craw. He helped them get two systems already, without even realizing what he was doing. Then he stumbled onto it and tried to freeze them out. It was a neat racket and I'd like to meet the guy who thought it up. Thornton's electronics subsidiary is subbing on a military contract for a whole bunch of these rigs, complete systems. Thornton supplies various components used in the final assembly. One of Howlie's companies had the final inspection and quality assurance contract for the military. Through quality rejects and a lot of juggling, they managed to piecemeal-out enough rejected components to assemble two complete systems. They've got them holed up somewhere right now, Thornton swears he doesn't know where, until they get enough to complete the link to Vegas. But God, it was a sweet idea. I guess they marked the QC rejects as salvage, cancelled out the serial numbers, and buried all the records of the final transactions.''

"Or burned them," Bolan said. He was remembering a thick stack of ashes in the Winters fireplace. "Could those be the papers Lisa Winters was yelling about?"

"It's beginning to make sense," Blancanales said thoughtfully. "Howlie was a poor sap, a dupe. He dug up the records and took them home ... maybe to study them and confirm his suspicions. Once he knew, he told them to go to hell."

"He would do that," Schwarz said musingly.

"He'd have to have an edge on them somewhere," Bolan pointed out. "And his edge was the records. He could expose the whole scheme by publicly producing those records."

"Mexican stand-off," Blancanales said. "He'd also be incriminating himself. So he couldn't just haul off and let fire. But ... as long as he had those papers...."

"Right," Bolan agreed. "So why would he burn them? He had the boys over a barrel."

"Maybe he just couldn't keep them there," Schwarz said quietly.

"It's why he sent for Able Team," Blancanales decided.

"Too late," Schwarz murmured.

"Too late for the living," Bolan told them, ice creeping into his voice. "But not too late for the dead. Come on. We're moving out."

"Where to?" the Politician inquired.

"You, to see a young lady. Concerning a stack of papers and why they were burned."

"Wait'll I comb my hair," Blancanales said, grinning.

Bolan stabbed Gadgets Schwarz with his eyes. "You've got the cold job," he warned him. "Find that stolen gear."

Schwarz's eyelids fluttered rapidly, but all he had to say about the assignment was, "Okay. So I'll bundle up good."

Bolan did not share the secret with his buddies, but he had saved the really cold job for himself.

It was time to spread the tar around.

He had to roust Tony Danger.

Even if it meant rousting him from a jail cell.

He did not know it at that moment, but a jail cell was precisely where he'd have to go to nail the guy.