The idea told it like it was: the mob is everywhere, into everything — squeezing, gouging, clawing, manipulating and controlling wherever bucks flowed freely — and, like it was, Puerto Rico and all the Caribbean playlands were identical peas in the same pod that housed Las Vegas.

The single purpose of Mack Bolan's life was to stop the Mafia wherever he found their leeching tentacles of influence — to jar their omnipotence, to confound their brilliance at organization, and to rid the earth of their oppressive weight. Others had failed in that purpose. The combined talents of law-enforcement agencies the world over had been f ailing for longer than Mack Bolan had been alive. Competitive syndicates and rival gangs had arisen to challenge the awesome power of La Cosa Nostra, only to be immediately snuffed out or absorbed by the invisible empire.

So what made a lone man, totally unsupported by anything other than his own wits and will, think that he could succeed where so many others had failed? Bolan himself did not consider such questions. In his own understanding, he was technically dead already — a man doomed by his own actions, by his own character. Victory meant living for one more day, and carrying his war to the enemy one more time. There could be no personal victory for Mack Bolan; this also he understood. His war with the Mafia had been declared on such an unpromising note, and each battle of that conflict was regarded as merely another step along his final mile of life.

It had all begun with five blasts of a Marlin .444, fired from an office building onto the streets of the eastern U.S. city of Pittsfield, in the ambush-execution of five local gangland figures.