finger at that moment would have stilled that forked tongue forever. But the pained face of a pretty girl streaked across the memory field, influencing an already reluctant trigger finger, pushing the scan onward. To take Kaufman at this point would be to play directly into Bonelli's designs on Arizona. Kaufman would keep.
The hairs were already calibrated to the range. A quick mental adjustment for windage moved them two clicks left of the portable telephone at Kaufman's side. No flesh stood in the path.
He squeezed into the pull and rode the recoil for instant target evaluation, smiling with grim satisfaction as that phone took sail in a flurry of flying fragments. The bullet got there faster than sound, and Bolan was already squeezing into the next pull before that startled flesh down there understood what was happening. The hollow thunderclaps rolled away from his knoll across the flats to reverberate from the sounding board of the ranch house as puffs of cement dust and exploding glass marked the progress of the rapid-fire barrage, each round targeting harmlessly from the human point of view but wreaking considerable destruction upon inanimate objects.
No human flesh was in view down there, now. A couple of heads bobbed cautiously just above the surface of the pool. The sunning board was overturned; folding chairs scattered in hasty patterns of retreat. A jeep was tearing along a dusty road from the north forty, but there was no other obvious movement anywhere down there. Bolan gathered his gear and withdrew. Paradise Ranch had recognized a truth.
Chapter 8
The wedge
The true scope of the Phoenix game was beginning to gel, imposing itself on Bolan's consciousness as a sinister silhouette, still devoid of detail, but already looming above anything he had been prepared to find in the Grand Canyon State. The Executioner had come to Arizona seeking heroin and dealers in the poison, but he had found instead that 'something else,' fragmentary, veiled, still incomplete, but something, something big, overshadowing the routine importation of Mexican drugs just as the Mafia itself overshadowed ordinary street crime. As that silhouette grew, expanding into a looming shadow of doom, Bolan realized the full urgency of his situation, his need to identify the game plan and the highly lethal players.
For once, the problem was compounded not by the usual shortage of leads, but by too many. Too many game trails to follow and too many players to identify without a comprehensive score card. There were simply too damn many fingers in the Arizona pie.
It had begun with Nick Bonelli, the Tucson Mafia, and heroin. Then came the startling realization of a secret paramilitary force drilling in the Tucson desert and striking northward toward the Phoenix preserves of Moe Kaufman and company. Complications aplenty, yeah. More than enough even before the addition of a kinky senator who was maybe being groomed as White House material.
Too many leads, sure. Bolan always sought the overall view, the big picture, but the picture in Arizona was just too big. The stage was so crowded with actors that the plot was all but lost in their entrances and exits. And the most recent addition to the cast was a face from the Executioner's own memory, an identity which eluded him with frustrating adeptness. Bolan had wracked his brain seeking a name to match that face, an identity to pair with that vague remembrance and the evil tremors it inspired. He had managed to eliminate known mafiosi and their hangers-on by scanning his mental mug file, which left him where? Vietnam? Before?
He brushed the phantom aside to concentrate once more upon the game itself, a mystery whose significance overshadowed the importance of any one man. Arizona offered so many opportunities for an industrious tribe of cannibals that Bolan scarcely knew where to begin looking. Heroin, sure, and all the associated border rackets which could rake in millions every year for the mob coffers. But Nick Bonelli had all that already, and he needed to prove nothing by declaring unnecessary war upon Kaufman and the Phoenix mob. The same argument negated consideration of the other routine rackets, which had been shared more or less peacefully by the competing mobs for over three decades. None of those rackets nor even all of them together could justify the expense and risk incurred by Bonelli in outfitting, training, and unleashing his private army.
And that left, yeah, something else.
Always the trail led back to Abraham Weiss, and politics, and ... what?
Real estate was booming in Arizona, and Bolan knew very well how deeply Kaufman and Weiss had mined the illicit goldfields of fraud and foreclosure. A land grab? Bolan put it down as a 'possible' and continued his mental search.
Mining was important In Arizona, with the state supplying 54 percent of all American copper and one- eighth of the world supply. Silver and gold were big, too, and with them came the whole range of associated industries and manufacturing — electronics, aircraft, steel, aluminum, transportation equipment — the list went on forever. And much of that industrial wealth was centered around Phoenix. Of late, there had been rumbles UP to the federal level about finding a suitable climate and industrial atmosphere for serious development of solar energy plants as an alternate fuel source for the entire nation. The Arizona desert had been suggested by Senator Abraham Weiss among others.
And yeah, it might play. The Executioner's mind began to pick significant details from among the mass of useless ones, slowly shaping order out of chaos. Phoenix was already big in the Arizona economy, and by all indications it was slated to be bigger still, and very soon. And Phoenix belonged to Moe Kaufman in all the ways that mattered.
But for how long?
Bolan added up the possible ramifications of the deal, lopped off half for possible exaggeration, and still found himself looking straight at an impending coup d'etat. The thought chilled him.
His hands clenched the warwagon's steering wheel, his jaw set in grim determination. A shattering offense was clearly indicated, but first he had to find the opposing team.
And where the hell were they?
'Is there any room for mistake?' Jim Hinshaw's voice was not hopeful, indicating that he knew what the answer must be.
'No chance, Jim,' Angel Morales told him earnestly, to the accompaniment of Floyd Worthy's head-shake. 'I'm sure it was Bolan.'
The black man softly added, 'What did I tell ya?'
'Okay, okay.' Hinshaw waved away the I-told-you-so's with an irritated gesture. 'No sweat. This is nothing we can't handle.'
Worthy frowned. 'We'd better get started then. We ain't done all that well handlin' it so far.'
Hinshaw parried that verbal thrust with a question. 'Why didn't you nail him when you had the chance?'
'You never saw a cat move that fast, man. Least I never did. He damn near outran those slugs from my M-16.'
'Don't build him up to be more than he is,' Hinshaw cautioned.
'I'm not buyin' any ghost stories,' the black man assured him. But that mother is some kind of man!'
'Bastard, you mean,' Hinshaw countered. 'I'm not the only one here with a score to settle with Sergeant Mack Bolan.' He stressed the rank designation, turning it almost into an obscenity.
'We dig where you're coming from, man,' Morales broke in. 'But we can't play games with this dude. He's been tearing up the families from ...'
'Save the history lesson, Angel. I did six months hard time thanks to that-' He left the sentence unfinished, the oath unspoken, but the grim set of his features told the story eloquently to his companions. Silence reigned in the office for a long moment before Hinshaw spoke again. When he did, all traces of tension and fury had been suppressed in his voice, and the facade of unshakable calm was restored.
'The mission comes first, as always. Bolan has Involved himself now, and we have to deal with him as a definite threat. Angel, what did he want from Kaufman?'
The smaller man squared his shoulders before speaking. 'Him and Kaufman were talking a deal, Jim. I swear to God.'
Hinshaw was clearly skeptical. 'It doesn't ring true. What's the scam?'
'Cease fire, so he says. If Kaufman cools it and takes out the Senator on his own, Bolan will take care of us
