Bolan stepped up to the desk and told the sergeant, "Jail pass."

The guy glanced at the badge on Bolan's chest and reached for a paper form. "Courts?" he asked disinterestedly.

Bolan replied, "Prosecutor's office."

The cop grunted and shoved the pass at him.

Cold, yeah.

Siberian shivery cold.

But ... so far, so good.

He wandered around from there until he found the detention section. The jail warden's desk was flanked by a group of irritable-looking and noisy men carrying briefcases.

Bolan had an idea who they were.

He pushed through them and leaned across the desk to speak in low tones to the cop on duty there. He showed him the pass and told him, "D.A. wants one of your VIPs over in interrogation." He flicked his eyes significantly toward the group of civilians. "Let's not mention any names."

He was going through the booking records as he spoke. He found the card he wanted and pushed it at the duty warden. "This one. We won't want to bring him through here."

The cop nodded his head, understanding. He jotted something on Bolan's pass and told him, "Take him out the back. I'll call down and clear it for you."

The man from blood nodded and went on, into the cell block, showing his pass and picking up an escort there, past the tank and along a musty row of cells.

The escort pulled up at a door about halfway along, turned a key in the lock, and told the Executioner, "Here's your man."

It sure was.

Tony Danger sauntered out, a nasty smile straining at his face. 'Told you peasants I wouldn't be here for supper," he gloated.

Bolan wordlessly signed a receipt for the prisoner, then spun him around and shoved him toward the rear of the building.

"Watch that!" Tony Danger snarled. "I'll have your fuckin' badge!"

Bolan winked at the escort and left him standing there at the cell door as he hustled the prisoner toward the rear exit. He signed another receipt there and took his man along a short corridor and outside to the vehicle area.

"What is this?" the Mafioso asked suspiciously, his head jerking about in an awareness of the unusual procedure as Bolan dragged him to a car and opened the door.

Bolan spoke for the first time since the initial encounter. "Don't argue, Mr. Danger. Just get in the damn car, please sir."

"What? Are you nuts? A jailbreak? Hey — my lawyers will — "

"You can't stop Bolan with a writ, Mr. Danger." The tall man in the police uniform shoved the protesting caporegime into the seat and slammed the door, then went quickly around to the driver's side and climbed in.

"What are you saying?" Tony Danger demanded, all but frothing at the mouth in a mixture of bewilderment and indignant anger. "The guy wouldn't have the nerve to bust in there after anybody!"

Bolan had the car moving. He nearly collided with another vehicle that came screeching into the parking lot, horn blaring. The other car whipped away just in time to avoid the collision.

Bolan caught a glimpse of a tortured face behind the wheel of that vehicle and — beside it — a flashing impression of the amused yet somber features of the all-cop from L.A., Carl Lyons.

Then he was into the street, accelerating with everything the Ferrari had. It became obvious quickly that there was no pursuit so he eased off and angled a glance toward his unhappy passenger.

"What did you say, Tony?" he asked frigidly.

"I said the guy wouldn't have the nerve to...."

The sounds just gurgled away and the little Mafioso was turning to stone, his mouth agape, staring with a horrifying awakening at the freeze-dried face of the big guy behind the wheel.

"Don't lose your voice now, Tony," Bolan advised him. "It's the only thing you've got between life and death."

At that, it was a hell of a lot more than the Executioner could have had going for him, back at San Diego jail.

Cold, yeah.

It was what his game was made of.

Cold blood.

They had cleared the area of all but official personnel and the morgue-like silence in that big hall was being well-resonated by the quivering-with-rage voice of Captain John Tatum.

He was leaning forward with both big hands splayed out across the jail warden's desk, his face thrust to within an inch of the other poor guy's as he shouted, "Yes, I said kidnap! You let Mack Bolan stroll in here and kidnap one of your prisoners!"

The officer was desperately trying to get the homicide chief to consider two slips of paper which he was holding between trembling fingers. He spluttered, "Hell, Cap'n, he signed the receipts."

Tatum leaned back with a defeated sigh. There was nothing to be gained by badgering the poor bastard, the sigh seemed to say. In a voice subdued and embittered, he told the duty warden, "Okay, Tom. You go tell the watch captain not to worry, that you've got signed receipts for the missing prisoner. You can paste them to his forehead when they bring him back...to the morgue."

The desk cop muttered, "Hell, it was just cut and dried routine. How was I to know? I can't personally recognize every officer on this force. Hell, we got — "

"I know the strength of our force," Tatum rasped. "Now you listen. You're on duty until the chief himself says otherwise. Got that? You don't go home, you don't even go to the pot. You see nobody and you talk to nobody who isn't toting a badge, and even then it'd better be somebody you know by sight. Got that?"

The guy nodded his head in miserable understanding.

Carl Lyons had been watching the performance from the safe background. Tatum turned to him and growled, "What were you telling me about Bolan playing the odds? Some odds. This is the Goddamnedest most outrageous grandstand play I ever heard of."

Lyons shrugged and dropped his eyes in commiseration for the other man's torment. Oftentimes, he realized, the flesh beneath those tough old police hides was painfully sensitive. He said, "I forgot to tell you. The guy sometimes makes his own odds. I don't know what to say, John. I just don't know."

"Well I've got to keep the wraps on this bullshit as long as I can. Maybe something will ... hell, this is a nightmare. I don't believe it. How can I tell them — those lawyers, the D.A., the court — how do I tell them a public good prisoner has been kidnapped by a probable assassin?"

"You're doing the right thing, if my opinion's worth anything," Lyons declared quietly. "Stall it all you can. Maybe...."

"Maybe what?" the Captain asked, ready to accept any gleam of hope.

"I don't know. Just maybe."

"If Tony Danger turns up dead, I don't know ... either. The only prayer I know, Lyons, is the 23rd Psalm. And somehow it just doesn't seem to fit this problem."

The old boy was really taking it hard.

Carl Lyons understood. Perfectly. You put your life into a job — you worked it and sweated it with every damned thing you had — and the only time anybody ever noticed you was when you stubbed your toe and fell, face-first. Yeah, he understood.

The deputy-chief arrived, followed moments later by the chief himself.

A reporter from the San Diego Union, probably picking up the vibrations of something hot, tried to get in. He was all but thrown back out.

The battery of lawyers representing the Lucasi bunch were still out there beyond those doors, raising hell louder and louder and demanding to know what was going on.

At almost exactly twenty minutes after the awful event, the duty warden looked up from a phone call he'd just answered and called out, "Is there a Sergeant Carl Lyons in here?"

There was.

But who the hell would be calling him here?

Who the hell even knew that he was ... oh hell, it couldn't be.