It was this total portrait of Mack Bolan which so intrigued Lt. Alan Weatherbee of the Pittsfield homicide bureau and — though he had nothing to base a case upon — the detective knew that The Executioner had descended upon his town and that he was stalking another kind of enemy through the underworld paths of Pittsfield. Weatherbee was shedding no tears over the dead hoodlums — he would not have invested a nickel in a wreath for the mass funeral — but he also could not allow a self-appointed executioner to prowl the streets of his city. He pointed this out to Bolan, and suggested that the soldier return immediately to the more appropriate battle areas in Vietnam.
Bolan, however, had discovered something of his own, as witness this entry in his personal journal, dated the day following the initial slayings:
"Scratch five. Results positive. Identification confirmed by unofficial police report. The Mafia, for God's sake. So what? They can't be any more dangerous or any smarter than the Cong. Scratch five, and how many are left? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? So — I've got another unwinnable war on my hands."
Yes, decidedly, Bolan had another war on his hands. He knew the Mafia, had grown up in neighborhoods dominated by the lordly Dons — he knew their power, their viciousness, and their patterns of intimidation which could never tolerate a successful retaliation from their victims. They would be after Bolan's head, and they would follow him all the way to Southeast Asia if necessary. If the police had been able to put the story together, Bolan knew with a certainty that the mob's own formidable intelligence network could not be more than a step or two behind.