It was here that he encountered the master plan of Cosa di tutti Cosa, or the total domination of American life by underworld interests. In his own unique way, Bolan postponed the realization of that master plan even while accepting the fact that he could never, by himself, totally destroy the Mafia. It was a war of impossible dimensions which one man alone could never hope to win. Thus began the new phase of the Bolan Wars, the war of frustration. If he could not cut out the heart of this cancer, he would at least sever an arm here and there, keep them off balance, and keep hacking at them until the world awakened to the reality of this many-tentacled giant bent on devouring it.

Thus also, Chicago. If New York had been a nightmare, then Chicago must surely be the grim awakening, the model city for The Thing of All Things, Cosa di tutti Cosa, theThing already come to pass. For Mack Bolan, Chicago was the inevitable next scene of confrontation with the mob. Certainly he was knowledgeable regarding that triumvirate of power described by bestselling author Ovid Demaris in hb masterful work on Chicago, Captive City:

"Today it is nearly impossible to differentiate among the partners — the businessman is a politician, the politician is a gangster, and the gangster is a businessman."

So what sort of man is it who single-handedly challenges such a power combine? Is he indeed the same naive soldier who returned from the battlefront of Vietnam to bury his own beloved dead — and then to avenge their deaths? Could anysensitive and normally intelligent man undergo the gory violence and continual jeopardy of the Bolan Wars without also undergoing a radical alteration to his personality? It would seem not. Bolan had been growing into his own destiny-1 — certainly into a deeper understanding of the dimensions of his conflict — and most probably into a finer appreciation of the reasonsfor this war.