He was dressed all in black. From his right shoulder was suspended a "greasegun" machine pistol, riding muzzle-down at the hip. Clamped into the snap-away leather beneath his left arm was the black Beretta Brigadier — a nine millimeter autoloader with a muzzle silencer, his most trusted weapon. A number of extra clips for both weapons were carried in a web belt at his waist — also a light assortment of personal munitions, including a small fragmentation grenade and an incendiary flare. On the ground at his feet rested a flat canvas bag — a "satchel charge" of high explosives.

The place he watched occupied a chunk of high-rent ground completely isolated from the rest of the neighborhood by a couple of acres of asphalt parking area. At dead center was the joint itself, with access along a cozy little pathway winding through artificial shrubbery and plastic flowers. A man-made brook encircled the building, flowing beneath quaint footbridges and jogging around rustic benches emplaced in synthetic arbors.

The China Gardens, they called it, but most of it was bastard-American-Oriental with two wings of weathered stucco, painted-on dragons, and false eaves for the flat roofs. One of those wings housed a dining room, which featured a Chinese menu native only to America. The other provided a ballroom-lounge with pretty Chinese hostesses and cocktail waitresses — the only genuine Oriental touch to the entire place.

At front and center was a two-story structure that was supposed to look like a pagoda; apparently nobody had ever told the owners that a pagoda is a sacred place — a temple, not a saloon. No one seemed to mind but Bolan. Business had been good and the trade lively throughout its surveillance.

But Bolan had seen the joint in the daytime, and it had looked as seamy as most of these places are in honest sunlight.