unwinnable war, then Bolan's one-man campaign against the Mafia could only be an impossible one. Hounded from both sides, by both the law and the underworld, there could be but one outcome for Mack Bolan. With one tug of his mind, Brantzen had half expected that Bolan would come to him. Another tug told him that it would not happen, that Bolan would stand up one time too many and die on his feet, without once thinking of the refuge which Brantzen could offer him. The surgeon had made a bet between the two sides of his mind, with the odds even as to whether Bolan would cut and run for a new face or stand and die in his old one.
Brantzen had been neither surprised nor disappointed, then, when the Executioner came calling on him. Their greetings were exchanged with an almost formal and subdued warmth, the handshake firm and prolonged, and with few words passing between.
'I've been haftway expecting you,' the surgeon said.
'You know why I'm here,' Bolan murmured.
'Right. You want me to make you beautiful.'
'You could fall dead in the process.'
Brantzen grinned. 'It shouldn't be all that tough a job.'
'You know what I mean, Jim,' Bolan said. 'My playmates don't like anyone else cutting into the game.'
Brantzen had led him through the deserted lobby and into casual living quarters to the rear, small but adequate for the bachelor doctor. 'You worry about the playmates,' Brantzen told Bolan. 'That face of yours is all the worry I can handle at once. Whom do you want to please with the new one, Mack — the old ladies or the young ones?'
Bolan sighed. 'You can cut it that close?'
The surgeon smiled at the pun, picked up a sheaf of sketches from a table, and tossed them into Bolan's lap. 'I've been working on these ever since I heard you were in the area,' he said. 'I can give you any of those. It's your choice.'
Bolan was shuffling through the sketches. He stopped at one, smiled, passed on, then checked himself and returned to the one that had produced the smile. He laughed softly and tapped the sketch with an index finger. 'Did you do this one from memory, or is it just an accident that turned out this way?'
Brantzen bent to study the sketch. He stroked his chin and said, 'By gosh, it does look like . . . like . . .'
'My old sidekick,' Bolan said. 'And a spitting image. You could really make me look like this?'
The surgeon solemnly nodded his head. 'It's not the prettiest of the lot, Mack, but I'll have to agree with your logic. I'd say it's far and away your best choice.'
'How soon?' Bolan said, scowling at the sketch.
'If I call right now, my surgical nurse can be here by five,' Brantzen replied. 'We can be into surgery by six.'
Bolan nodded. 'The sooner the better,' he murmured. 'How long, then, before I'm up and around?'
'We can do it with local anaesthesia,' Brantzen said. 'You'll never have to go to bed, if you'd rather not. And if you're tough enough. I'd like to keep you around for a few days of post-care, though.'
Bolan was thinking about it. He said, 'I've been among the wounded before, Jim. It'll have to be that way this time. It's no go if I have to lay around here for days afterward. I have to keep moving.'
'I suppose you could,' Brantzen replied thoughtfully. 'If you're tough enough,' he added again.
'How long before the scars are healed?'
Brantzen smiled. 'The technique I have in mind will leave only tiny slits here and there, Mack. Except, possibly, for the nose, and I'd say that would be the last to heal. It varies with individuals, of course, but I should say you'd be relatively presentable within a few days to a week. There'll be some sensitivity for quite a while beyond that, though. I'll be doing some plastics work, you know. There could even be some minor rejection problems.'
Bolan glanced at his watch. 'You say we can get started by six? No chance of an earlier start?'
'Are the hounds at your heels, Mack?' the surgeon asked softly.
Bolan grimaced. 'Pretty close,' he said. 'And I can't hang around here for more than a few hours. I'll have to recuperate on my feet.'
'There's going to be pain.'
'I've lived with pain before.'
'Yes, I'm sure you have. Well . . . I could hurry Marge along, I guess, but I'd rather not arouse her suspicions. Come to think of it, this face of yours has been pretty much in the public eye. I guess I'd better have you prepped and ready by the time she checks in. She could never recognize you then.'
'We can't just go without her?' Bolan asked quietly.
'Well . . .' The surgeon wavered. 'It's a . . .'
'I've seen you go it alone with the Cong howling all around us.'
'Those were emergency conditions,' Brantzen said fretfully.
'This isn't?' Bolan asked, grinning.
The surgeon stared at Bolan for a thoughtful moment. He smiled suddenly and said, 'Okay, Sergeant, let's get the patient prepped for surgery. Come on, man, move, move, move.'
Bolan got to his feet and thrust the sketch at Brantzen. 'The patient is ready and waiting, Doctor,' he said.
Chapter Six
The balance
Once a jumping-off spot for hopeful prospectors heading into the Death Valley area, Palm Village had until recently evolved uneventfully into a typical desert-edge trade center serving a sparse agricultural area. Removed from major highway routes and largely untouched by 20th-century progress during the first half of the century, the quiet village had found new life in the desert-land boom of the fifties and sixties. An invasion by promoters and developers had threatened to convert the tranquil community into a second Palm Springs until conservative city fathers invoked legislative powers to cool the pace of progress. As a result, Palm Village was moving calmly along the path of controlled development, retaining much of its original charm while swelling gently into a quiet residential community of retired folk and health-seekers.
The original village square, referred to as 'Lodetown,' had stoutly resisted all civilizing inroads of the 20th century. It was composed mainly of oldtime saloons and beerhalls which were frequented by farmhands and cowboys from the surrounding area, and was the chief source of Palm Village's crime statistics, most of the trouble developing on Saturday nights and limited to 'drunk and disorderlies' and an occasional fistfight. Lodetown boasted a quite stable population of prostitutes, each of them well known by local authorities. All were arrested each Sunday morning, fined $21.20, and released. This was an effective arrangement, considered entirely fair by the girls involved, satisfactory to the demands of law and order, and consistent with the city fathers' concept of 'logic and reason.' Besides, the weekly fines easily covered the entire expense of policing Lodetown.
Robert (Genghis) Conn was still lean and hard at the age of 52. A tall man with a deeply lined, weathered face, he looked like a Gary Cooper version of the Western marshal. Actually, Conn was chief of the city's small police force and had been a law-enforcement officer since the end of World War II. He had attended the police academy at Los Angeles and had served briefly with the L.A. police, then as an Orange County deputy until recalled to military duty for the Korean conflict. He returned from Korea directly into the chief's job at Palm Village, replacing the one-man agency of Town Marshal in one of the initial acts of civic progress.
It had not been a progressive move for Conn himself, however, and none was more aware of this than Conn. The Palm Village job represented a retreat of the once-ambitious lawman, the desert town offering him the peace and tranquility which had suddenly become so important to him. Conn had seen enough blood and violence to last him a lifetime; he wanted no more of it. For almost twenty years now, he had managed to avoid the violent life. He and his wife Dolly had a modest home with no mortgages in the older section of town, and here they planned to live forever. In peace and tranquility.
