The Bone Yard by Don Pendleton

room. Behind them, three of Tokyo's finest were stretched out on the cold cement, already drawing curious show girls and stagehands. As the door closed behind him, Bolan heard them calling for someone to fetch security, an ambulance.
    The numbers, right.
    He heard them running now, and he was running out of time in Vegas. This had been a skirmish, but it would be suicidal to hang around and answer questions for police.
    Tommy Anders recognized the urgency and kept his quick-change to a minimum, having Bolan in and out of there in something less than one minute flat. They were well along their way in the direction of the parking lot before security arrived to deal with their attackers.
    Outside, the desert night was cooling off despite the blood-red fire of glaring neon. By midnight, you could freeze to death beyond the city. But for Vegas this night, Bolan forecast heat enough to burn some houses down. Enough perhaps, to warm the whole damned town.
    "We've played this scene before, you know." Mack Bolan smiled and sipped his coffee, making one more scan of the perimeter around the all-night drive-in restaurant. "I thought it looked familiar." And the Executioner could not escape a certain sense of deja vu, right, sitting there with Anders in the rental Ford. A sense that he had seen and done it all, been through it all before with the comic. Their initial meeting had been backstage from a Vegas showroom, all those lives ago, and Anders had been feeling pressure that time, too. The heat was coming from a pair of Mafia sluggers then, and Bolan had pulled him out from under. They had cooperated on that first campaign in Vegas, and later when they met again in Honolulu, Anders had rendered valuable aid to Bolan's hellfire effort on another front.
    He was an ally, right, and so much more.
    He was a friend.
    "You still have that old knack for charming your admirers," Bolan told him wryly.
    Anders grinned, shrugged.
    "What can I say? It's my magnetic personality."
    "You working this officially?"
    "Let's call it a fortuitous coincidence. The date was booked, and then it all broke loose between the local Mob and their Eastern competition. Hal figured as long as I'm here, what the hell."
    Mention of the big Fed's name made Bolan smile. The man from Justice was another friend, and friends were few and far between in Bolan's world these days.
    "How is... everybody?"
    "Getting by. You know how it is — win one here and lose it back over there. You're missed, guy, where it counts."
    There was a momentary silence and when he resumed the comic's voice was lighter, more upbeat.
    "I hear you took a turn with Hal there a while back."
    Bolan smiled and nodded at the reference. His "turn" had been with a group called Savannah Swingsaw, four women determined to shake up the Mob in the southern United States.
    "Some guy," Bolan said.
    "Yeah." Another silence, longer this time, finally broken by the comic in a cautious tone. "You here to meet the man from Tokyo?"
    "He's on my list. Were those his soldiers at Minotte's?"
    "You were there?" Anders's eyes widened briefly. "Well, that clears up some question marks. And the kamikaze squad was his — or a very nifty frame."
    "There was a girl..."
    "Oh, yeah?" The comic raised a lone ironic eyebrow. "I wish you'd tell me where you find the time."
    Bolan's answering grin was weary, brief.
    "You've got to pace yourself," he answered. "But this was strictly business. Bob Minotte had her in the bag before the samurai express rolled in. I got there just in time to take her out."
    "The litter on the highway?" Anders spoke with mild awe in his voice, a tone that said he knew the answer before Bolan voiced it.
    The Executioner's silent nod was anticlimactic.
    "She does some writing for the Daily Beacon here in town. Name's Lucy Bernstein."
    A frown creased the ethnician's face. He seemed to be searching for something in the mental data banks and finally found it.
    "You don't mean old Abe Bernstein's