But neither was Bolan a man who could bury his family, then turn and walk away when the killers and their employers roamed free. Other good men would carry on his work in the jungles of Nam.

The Executioner could not return to the other side of the world while an all-powerful evil cancer claimed his family and festered from within at the vitals of his country. Bolan did consider himself a patriot, and he was much too American to turn his back on a threat like that.

The Army-trained Executioner declared a wholly illegal war against the Mafia. Bolan used all his Special Forces training in a war of attrition to keep the cannibals at bay before it was too late.

At first Bolan was consumed by thoughts of vengeance.

But he quickly realized the danger inherent in such an attitude. So he reassessed his feelings carefully, discovering that he could provide the hard edge between the civilized and the animals in the street.

Bolan saw no justice in the halls of justice, so he personally delivered, the tab to Mafia slimeballs for their lifetimes of sin.

Bolan accomplished the impossible.

The Executioner brought the vile behemoth to its knees in thirty-eight audacious campaigns, in the process doing what law-enforcement agencies had been unable to do.

This led to a top-secret government pardon with Bolan "dying" and being reborn with a new identity Colonel John Phoenix, head of America's covert antiterrorist wars.

The enemy had not changed, as far as Bolan, or Phoenix, was concerned.

The terrorist network tried to do to the world what the Mob had tried with a country.