The Executioner took a moment to recon the vehicle, making sure that there was no one left alive inside or crouching behind it. Then he slipped Big Thunder back into its military holster. The probe had gone to hell, and he was nowhere near the battlefield intelligence that he had hoped to gather from Minotte. For a fleeting instant, Bolan wondered if the Dixie capo had survived the hit on his estate. No matter. There would be other sources of information available in Vegas.

The big warrior knew that he would need that information now more than ever. There were wild cards in the game — for all he knew the whole damned deck was wild — and he could not proceed another step along the campaign trail without some hard intel.

The Vegas warning signs were badly out of synch, and he had to get some stretch, some cool perspective to prevent himself from making lethal errors along the way.

One means of gaining that intelligence, perhaps, was already within his grasp. The woman, right. Someone had thought she was important enough to steal her from Minotte and to lose lives in the process. Bolan meant to know what made her worth the trouble.

It was deathly still beneath the velvet midnight sky, except for the hungry crackling of the flames. The warrior made a final fleeting survey of the dead, then turned back toward the living.

2

"I haven't thanked you properly... for everything."

Bolan glanced over at the lady, noting that she had fixed up her hair a little while they drove.

She did not look so battle weary now in the reflected dash light and the glaring neon from outside.

"You're welcome," he said simply.

They were driving north along the Strip in Bolan's rental car. Some fifteen minutes earlier they had ditched the captured crew wagon, swapping it for a nondescript sedan, which he had leased for the duration under a cold alias.

"Just like that? You saved my life."