A police cruiser flashed across the street down range, and the deep rumbling of fire trucks had now joined the sounds of the night.

Yeah... he had overplayed his numbers, all right.

The enemy had regrouped outside the flaming building, and a lot of arm-waving and signal-calling was happening down there now. They would be organized into a hot pursuit, very soon now.

Sirens were flying all around the area — and Bolan had known what to expect if he dallied too long at the scene of combat. The entire neighborhood would be sealed off — by police and fire equipment — and the Executioner would be contained within a painfully small hunting preserve, with irate Mafiosi turning every rock in a search for their most hated enemy.

Yeah. So what the hell. It was what a guy could expect when he opened with a wild card.

But it was the China doll who'd made the difference. Except for her, he would have been free and clear before anyone had realized exactly what happened.

Bolan was poised there, at the edge of hell, his senses flaring out through the night in an intuitive search for the best road back.

And then she was there again, moving out of the darkness precisely as she had done before, except that this time she seemed to be targeting directly on the man in black and she was showing him a tiny automatic which somehow managed to look large and menacing in that petite hand.

He allowed her to gaze into the bore of the greasegun for a second before he told her, "You're not the enemy."

"Worse than that," she replied in a voice that almost smiled. "I could be a friend."

He shrugged and said, "You've got about a second to decide which."

"That's your decision," she told him. "Will you follow me?"

Bolan hesitated for only an instant — to sample the atmospheric developments about him — and it was all there, all the elements that could spell entrapment, defeat, and the end of a highly important war.