He was a doomed man, and he knew it.

But, as he noted in his journal, "I'm dead anyway, I may as well make my death count for something. The cops can't do anything about the mob. The Mafia is a leech at this nation's throat and they know all the legal tricks and shady angles to keep themselves clear of the law. Besides, they're just too big. What they can't beat, they buy. If they can't buy it, they simply stamp it out. As they'll stamp me out one day very soon. But they are going to have to work for it. I won't just roll over and die for them. Ill die, sure, but while they're making it official I'm going to rattle their teeth and shake their house with everything I have."

For a "dying man," Bolan had a considerable amount of shake and rattle left in him. He hit the Pittsfield arm of the Mafia with a thunder and lightning blitz which indeed shook their house down and all but eliminated the Mafia presence in that city — for awhile.

Following that unexpected victory, Bolan faded away like the guerilla expert he was — believing himself to be ten-times doomed now, and determined only to stretch his "last bloody mile" to its highest toll of enemy lives. He resurfaced in Los Angeles a short while later, this time with a "death squad" of hastily recruited combat buddies from Vietnam — and the Bolan Wars began in earnest. He lost his valiant squad in the battles for Los Angeles, but he gained a new appreciation of the forces arrayed against him — and a deeper understanding of his own situation. And he began to believe that just possibly he couldbeat the mob at their own game.

From an old friend, an ex-army combat surgeon, Bolan received plastic surgery and a new face — not to retire behind, but to come out fighting in.