Meanwhile "the bastard" blitzed on, surfacing here and there for a quick hit and an even quicker fade-out, and Bolan's 'last bloody mile" became an ever-widening wipe-out trail which ranged across the ocean into France and England, then back to New York City for a pitched battle there and another quick fade.

Timing kept Bolan moving, kept him alive — but intelligence and planning and a finely tuned military poise kept him beating the mob at their own game.

Mack Bolan was more than a war machine, however. He was also a man — subject to all the dreams and desires of any mortal — and his soul was growing weary of its burden of continual warfare, unending violence and ever-flowing rivers of blood. He did not regard himself as a crusader or as an avenging angel — but simply as a man who was doing a job which could not be avoided. Many times he contemplated the comparative ease which death offered him. Frequently he railed against his 'leper" status, self-imposed, which necessarily alienated him from all lasting human relationships. Occasionally he succumbed to a dark melancholy which drove him into deep introspections and philosophic searches.

Through all this inner writhing he remained Mack Bolan, the Executioner, one-man army par excellence, and through it all he developed a meaningful philosophy — or perhaps, simply, a deeper understanding of his own unique situation. In that understanding there was no possibility of a personal victory. If the mob did not eventually get him, then the police would. He was doomed, whether he surrendered or fought on — the only difference being that his doom could have some positive value for the world if he continued to fight the good fight. So, life for Mack Bolan had boiled itself down to the simplest of terms: kill to live, live to kill. Fight on, and go out like a warrior — or give up, and die like a caged rat. He did not regard the latter alternative as an option worthy of the smallest consideration. He would die as he had lived — to the point.