"Friend of yours?"

The guy sure didn't use many words.

"Uh, well... in a way. We, uh ... met once or twice." He snapped a quick glance toward his wife. She was wearing a shocked face. He hoped to God she'd keep her flannel mouth shut and he kept right on talking to edge her out, just in case.

"Winters was a nice man, God — that's terrible. How'd he die?"

"The hard way," the cold voice intoned. "Scattered all over his study."

Lucasi shivered. What kind of cat and mouse game was this? Why God why had he sent Diver and the other boys outside to ask dumb questions of poor Sammy?

So, he had to stall the guy as long as possible, that was the only thing left. God, he didn't even have a gun in here.

He took a deep breath and said, "Look, I don't know why you're coming telling me this. Uh ... you're Bolan, right? I knew that, I knew it right away. Look man, you're barking up a hollow tree this time. I got no beef with you at all, nothing. So you knocked over one of my messengers, okay. Hell with it, easy come easy go, that's the way I look at it. I mean, I got no beef. So you hit this Harlan Winters, okay, like I said, I met 'im once or twice, no big deal. No beef. Now, way I see it...."

Bolan said, "Save your breath." The cold gaze flicked to a watch at his wrist. "You've got twenty seconds."

"For what?" Lucasi cried.

"I'm looking for tracks, Bennie."

"What kind of tracks?"

"Who wanted Winters dead?"

"What? You mean you didn't ... ?"

"I didn't," the icy bastard clipped back. "Who did?"

Lucasi passed a shaking hand over his face. He sighed. Then he said, "Hell, I can't imagine. Why don't you ask Thornton. Maxwell Thornton, the big shot. Yeah. Ask him."

Bolan assured him, "I will." Another quick glance at the wristwatch, then, "You and the lady get out of here. Close the door behind you."

"You mean that's ... ?"

"Yeah, that's all for now." Something that might have been a smile flickered across those cold features. "Be seeing you, Bennie."

Lucasi muttered, "Yeah," in a choked voice as he grabbed Dorothy and shoved her out the door. He followed quickly and pulled the door firmly shut, then he left her standing there stupid naked in the hallway and ran shouting into the main part of the house.

Then he saw them through the sliding glass doors to the patio — all his boys — with their tails on the cement and their hands clasped atop their heads.

A couple other guys, dressed just like Bolan, were just then disappearing over the wall... and Ben Lucasi knew that he had been very neatly had all the way.

The son of a bitch had just walked in and taken over!

And for what?

For what tracks?

His goddamn khaki Mafia, for God's sake!

But what tracks?

They had departed the Lucasi neighborhood on diverging routes and regrouped ten minutes later on a bluff overlooking Mission Bay Park, the city's most popular water playground.

Blancanales still drove the bread truck he'd used in scouting the Winters home. Schwarz had coverted Bolan's "warwagon," a Ford Econoline van, into a mobile electronics workshop — and this remained as his base of operations.

Bolan himself was driving a "hot scout" — a speedy, high-maneuverable, European sports car.

This was their first chance to regroup and report since the hit on Sammy Simonetti at the airport. Each man dismounted from his vehicle and they held a council of war beside Bolan's roadrunner while they pulled concealing coveralls over their combat outfits.

"Sammy's bread is in the bread truck," Blancanales reported, grinning. "It counts out to exactly a hundred and five thousand. What do I do with it?"

"Keep it for the warchest," Bolan replied. "That's one of your problems for this operation. Anything Gadgets and I need, we'll come to you. You make all the buys. Less chancey that way."

Blancanales nodded. "Okay. How'd it go in Lucasi's palace?"

"Damn near disastrous," Bolan said. "The little man walked in while I was sounding his bedroom. You guys did a neat job outside, thanks. Probably saved the day."

"Did you get the bedroom bug planted?" Schwarz wondered.

"Yeah." The man from blood smiled. "In the headboard of his bed, while his wife slept. He's married to a kid ... but oh, what a kid!"

Blancanales snickered. "Maybe we could sell the tapes to an underground movie outfit."

Schwarz, all business, wanted to know, "Where'd you put the relay stations?"

"Window ledges, outside," Bolan reported. "All aligned at one-five-zero magnetic, per your instructions."

"Then we should have him snookered," Schwarz said. The gadgets-genius glanced at his watch and jotted a note in his surveillance log. "I'll have to cruise by and drain those storage banks in four hours. That's maximum storage, sorry."

Bolan had to grin. It was typical of Gadgets Schwarz to be "sorry" that he could not improve upon perfection. The little devices which he'd designed and built for this job were just about the ultimate in electronics surveillance, to Bolan's mind.

The pickup unit, consisting of a mike and a miniature radio transmitter, was about the size of a lady's wristwatch. The life in the tiny power cell was sufficient to provide 72 hours of continuous operation.

The "relay station," somewhat bulkier but still small enough for easy concealment, received and recorded the continuous broadcast from the pickup unit.

Upon command, the transmitter in the relay station would "unreel" the entire recording disc in about sixty seconds. That command would come from Schwarz's mobile console in the warwagon; he could cruise casually past the house once each four hours and "collect" the intelligence stored in the relay station ... four hours of electronic surveillance compressed into a sixty-second transmission keyed from the warwagon.

The re-recording, appropriately slowed and automatically performed within the master console, screened out all the silent zones or 'lapses" in the four-hour recording, preserving only the "audibles" for fast monitoring in the re-play. And Gadgets was "sorry" about that. They had followed Sammy Simonetti from the airport and used the courier's unhappy arrival at the Lucasi household as a diversion for their own penetration.

While Lucasi and his palace guard focused on the implications of Simonetti's busted play, Able Team slipped quietly in and wired the whole joint for sound.

"You've got four relays plus the phone tap," Bolan reminded Schwarz. "Can you collect them all on one pass?"

"No," Schwarz told him. "I could probably squeeze in two per pass but I'd rather not. A hundred yards is about the maximum reliable range for those relays. That gives me a hundred coming and a hundred going away, strict line-of-sight. I read that as one collection per pass, unless I just pull up and park."

"Pull up and park, then," Bolan suggested. "Change a tire, fiddle with your engine — anything that will cover. But I don't like five times past that house in the same vehicle."

"Okay, I'll park and drain," Schwarz agreed.

"Pol, you stay on Lucasi. Keep a log on his every move outside that house."

"You'll have it," Blancanales quietly replied.

"Did you get those zoom lenses for the camera?"

The Politician nodded his head in reply. "I could probably get a flea from a block away."

"Great. Try to get a picture of every one entering that house, plus every one he meets away from the house. Unless you're really tied into something fantastic, we meet back here in exactly four hours."

"What do I do in the meantime?" Gadgets wondered. "So far I've got a five minute job."

"Run over and drain the phone tap at Howlin' Marian's," Bolan instructed him. 'If you pick up something useful there, don't save it. Beep me on Able Channel."