Chicago Wipe-Out

combat zone, deeper into the jungle of survival, onward into the night.

Bolan was working on his girl, and presently she roused, and found herself in Bolan's arms, and she murmured, 'Are you an angel?'

He smiled, remembering, and replied, 'Not hardly. You got a bump on the head. Feeling okay?'

She gave him a glowing-eyes nod. 'On and on and on,' she whispered. 'I love you, Mack. I hope we neverfind the end.'

Bolan pointedly ignored the declaration of love. He ran a finger through a bullet hole in her ski jacket and gruffly told her, 'You came that close to the end, Foxy. About a sixteenth of an inch, I'd say.'

Tooclose, much too close, and Bolan realized that the war had hardly begun. He could not expose this girl to any more of it. He would have to find a place to stow her, and then he would have to get this war into gear and — one way or another — get it finished.

'You're hurt,' she had just discovered. 'Your neck, it's...'

'Just a nick,' he assured her. Bolan was not concerned about the scratch at his neck. It was the old wound in the shoulder that was giving him fits — his souvenir of New York. With two hands his task was going to be difficult enough — with onehand...

The wheelman was throwing him uneasy glances via the rearview mirror. Bolan sighed and said, 'Okay, Gene, end of trip for you. Stop at the next sign of life. And don't look so worried, I'm going to turn you loose. With a message. You deliver it straight, and you deliver it completely, or I'll come looking for you.'

'Sure, Mr. Bolan,' the wheelman replied. 'You got my word, I'll take a message anywheres you want.'

'You'll take it to the Capo's, Gene. All of them. And to the Chicago Four. You tell them that Bolan is busting their sanctum city wide open tonight. Tonight, understand?'

'Yessir, I got that.'

'And I'm taking them, too. All of them, all the bosses. Their free ride ends tonight.'

'I'll tell 'em that, Mr. Bolan.'

'I know who they are and I know where they are. And not one of them will see another sunrise. Are you reading me, Gene?'

'Yessir. You're wiping 'em all out tonight.'

'That's it. This storm is my friend, their enemy. You make sure that message gets delivered. All of it.'

'I'll sure make sure, Mr. Bolan. You got my word.'

'Okay. What's this up ahead?'

'I believe we're coming up on the Merchandise Mart, sir.'

'Fine. You leave us there. You stop the car, you get out, you disappear damn quick, and you don't look back once. Reading me?'

'Yessir, I been reading you right along.'

Yes, Gene the wheelman had been reading him. Great. So he'd set himself an impossible goal, he'd challenged, himself to produce something unproducible. But that was what this rotten war was made for. Bolan had to get it into gear... and finished for here, another, the War for Chicago would end tonight.

He gently squeezed the girl's hand and told her, 'This is no end for you, Jimi. Not here, not in this lousy way.'

'I end where you end,' she murmured.

Bolan hoped not. With everything in him, he fervently hoped not.

7 The course

The sign outside the modest North Side residence had announced the offices of Joseph Berger, 'tax consultant.' According to a brief note in Bolan's intelligence book, however, Joseph Berger was actually Leopold Stein, a brilliant Chicago attorney who, in his own way, had also waged a war against the mob... and lost.

Bolan was familiar with most of the details of Stein's story. He'd been a successful and respected lawyer, well-established in a comfortable practice, when he launched his 'citizen's campaign' and began crusading for 'a free Chicago.' For two years he had weathered threats, beatings, economic pressures, and various forms of political harassment while he dug into and exposed the various links in the chains that held his city bound. And when he began to step on overly sensitive toes, the cancer of power focussed its attention on this insignificant upstart long enough to finally crush the source of irritation. Or so it must have thought. Stein had been indicated on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy, disbarred from practicing law, financially ruined, physically maimed, crippled, and finally reduced to the shame of hiding under an assumed name.

Now forty-seven years of age, the plucky crusader looked sixty. His hair was snow-white. Prolonged pain and mental anguish had ravaged the once strong face — now heavily-scarred and bearing a leather patch over an empty eyesocket. He was partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair — but Leo Stein was still alive and, in his own way, fighting back. He spent most of his time now preparing legal briefs and background files, anonymously, and forwarding them to various grand juries and crime commissions in Illinois and neighboring states. According to Bolan's notes, Stein was the foremost living authority on mob operations in and around Chicago — it was said that he understood the interconnections of criminal influence even better than most men inside the mob.

In Bolan's thinking, this man had given more than anyone could reasonably ask. And so it was with an air of apology that the Executioner told him, 'We need your help, Mr. Stein.'

'Oh, I doubt that,' the attorney replied, inspecting his visitor with a critical gaze from the one good eye. 'I've been following your war with interest, Mr. Bolan. I don't entirely approve, but... well, I have to admit that your approach seems more effective than mine.' His attention returned to Jimi James, and he added, 'And certainly you're far more admirably supported than I.'

The girl's eyes dropped. She murmured, 'I'm afraid I'm just so much excess baggage.'

'What do you want?' Stein asked Bolan, suddenly all business.

'Someone is helping you remain covered,' Bolan replied, just as directly. 'I want you to ask them to do the same for Miss James.'

'I'll do that,' Stein replied without hesitation. 'What else?'

'I want protection for her right away, tonight.'

'You mean that you want her off your hands.'

'Think of it any way you like. I just want the girl protected.'

'You don't feel capable of doing that yourself?'

The guy was probing him, and Bolan knew it. He said, 'No sir. The chase is getting pretty hot.' He drew an imaginary circle about the bullet hole in Jimi's jacket. 'Toohot.'

'And you have confidence in my security. That's it?'

Bolan nodded. 'Yes sir, I have.'

'But I'm not all that secure, am I?' the lawyer said quickly.

'Sir?'

'How the hell did youfind me?'

'Any security can be breached,' Bolan replied. 'She'd still be a thousand times better off than with me.'

'You didn't answer my question,' Stein said fiercely.

'No sir, and I don't intend to.'

The attorney laughed and turned back to the girl. 'All right. Leave her here. I'll see that she's provided for.'

Bolan got to his feet. Jimi rose also and quietly told him, 'I think I'd rather not.'

'There isn't that much choice,' Bolan quietly replied.

Her eyes fell and she said, 'I — I guess you're right. You don't need me on your coattails.'

A muscle rippled in Bolan's jaw. He steeled himself and replied, 'That's right. Not tonight, that's for