The cash and cards vanished into a pocket of Bolan's jacket.

"Yeah, Leo the Fish, Chicago. You specialized in delivering a fish to the next of kin. That was your notice that the victim was now sleeping with the fish in Lake Michigan."

"So sue me."

"I will, exterminator. Move inside the booth. Against the wall."

Leo's eyes searched the room for help, anything. A tinge of terror touched his closely shaven face.

"So long, scum. You just made your last transaction." The Beretta coughed twice in the noisy bar. The rounds were aimed upward under the table, and one of them tore into Leo's heart. Leo sighed, closed his eyes and dropped his head against the wall as if sleeping.

Bolan replaced the Beretta under his jacket and stepped from the booth. He tossed a black metal marksman's badge beside the dead man.

Outside he crossed a name off a list. Then he wheeled the Thunderbird across the Willamette River to the east side of Portland. He was acting exactly as he had in Vietnam. Identify.

Infiltrate. Destroy. But the similarity, the necessity of war, grieved The Executioner.

The greater Brotherhood finance company was well out on Southeast Powell, past Mount Tabor Park and toward Powellhurst, but still within city limits.

The one-story building stood between a hi-karate school and a small grocery. The building was dark. Bolan parked in the back alley, slung a small supplies pack over his shoulder and left the car.

He picked the lock on the back door of the finance company and stole into the place.

It was a highly efficient operation. Loan records were stored on a TR'S-80 computer. Bolan found a file of 51 still 2-inch floppy diskettes marked Outstanding Loans and dumped them in a metal wastebasket.

On the wall was a computer printout graph that showed that interest payments had reached 186 percent of total payments on principal. In a legitimate loan operation the percentage would be fifteen or eighteen percent at most.