Mack Bolan knew what he was walking into at Chicago. There were no illusions of his own invincibility, and certainly no misjudgement of enemy power in this stronghold of organized crime. This was the city that the mob owned, the self-professed crime capital of the Western World, the locale of the mob's deepest entrenchment anywhere. And Bolan's challenge was knowingly hurled into the teeth of that vast empire which was characterized by The Chicago Tribuneas:

A world in which wrong is right — in which all incentive for honor, justice, suppression of crime, and even fundamental discipline has disappeared from broad divisions of the police department, the courts, and the all-pervading political party machine that has a strangle-hold on Chicago proper.

What sort of man would single-handedly invade such a province of power with the intention of subduing it, of "shaking their house down," of breaking the chains which had held this city captive for decades? What motivates a man like Mack Bolan — how does an ordinary young man become transformed into a methodical death-machine pledged to wholesale slaughter and unending warfare?

The truth of this particular case seems that, simply, there was no "transformation" — Bolan appears to be the same man in Chicago that he was in Pittsfield, scene of his original confrontation with the Mafia. The same skills which had carried him safely through two years of combat in Southeast Asia were moving him through this new jungle of violence and terror. The same scorn of death that had accompanied him into deep penetrations of enemy territory in Vietnam had walked with him into theenclaves of syndicated corruption and criminal power.

It should not be concluded that Bolan was a "wild ass warrior" who recklessly stormed a superior enemy in suicidal attacks.