Violent Streets by Don Pendleton

price. I could use a man of your... abilities."
    Bolan said nothing. He was amazed at the guy's gall in trying to buy him and his gun.
    "Listen, really," the mobster prodded, "I know natural talent when I see it. These boys were no shitheads, you know? Not like the old days, hell, but okay. You didn't take them out with no friggin' beginner's luck."
    Bolan remained silent, letting the guy spill his guts.
    "Fact is," Copa continued, "damned few guys I ever heard of could take two men... three men... in a face-to-face. Some of the old aces maybe, but hell..."
    Behind those weasel eyes, wheels were turning, gears clicking into place as an embryonic idea or suspicion took shape. Benny's face underwent subtle changes, and Mack Bolan's gut rumbled in response, feeling something coming.
    "You know, if it wasn't so goddamned far out... hey, uh, listen... that wouldn't be a Beretta you're holding, would it?"
    Bolan saw the end coming, inexorably, the last unknown variables falling into place behind Benny Copa' s suddenly haunted eyes.
    And he nodded.
    "You called it, Benny."
    Copa's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, then he licked his lips and tried again.
    "You're dead, guy," was all he could manage.
    "So are you," Bolan told him.
    And the Beretta chugged once, putting a 9mm parabellum round through Benny Copa's left eye socket and slamming him over out of sight behind the desk. There was no need to check his condition, and Bolan didn't bother.
    He put Copa's place behind him swiftly, his mind occupied with his own thoughts. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the office phone began jangling overhead, loudly and insistently. There was no one up there to answer the call.
    Back in his rental car and rolling, Bolan heard the grim words again in his mind. First spoken by Pol Blancanales in predawn darkness, and now, again, by the late and unlamented Benny Coppacetti.
    You're supposed to be dead, guy. Dead and buried.
    And yeah, theoretically, hypothetically, Mack Bolan was buried. Parts of him had been shed forever in Southeast Asia, in Pittsfield, in the final New York firestorm of his second mile against the Mafia.
    It might come to pass that another part — or all of him — would be buried right there in St. Paul that very day, but he couldn't — hell, wouldn't — live in fear of the unknown and the inescapable. It was not his way, and never would be.
    Mack Bolan was alive and living large.
    All the way to a meeting with the assistant P.C. of St. Paul, yeah, and beyond that, if necessary, into the gates of hell itself.

12
    From the journal of John Phoenix:
    We live in a cyclical universe. It seems that everything repeats itself, and comes full circle given time. I know that to be true of life and death, love and hate. I am finding out that it is also true of war. Nothing stays the same in life or war, but in the end, nothing changes.
    At one time, during one existence, the Mafia was my enemy and primary target. I believed that the disruption and destruction of their cannibalistic operations was the highest goal I could aspire to. With time, the "unwinnable" conflict resolved itself into something else, and I began to see a dim light at the end of the tunnel. And there was a victory of sorts, however temporary, but not before my war against the Mafia had gone full circle and returned to the city, to the ground where it had begun.
    This is a new war, against new enemies, but I cannot escape a sense of deja vu. The circles keep on turning, and in time all the faces of the predators and victims take on a similarity that is inescapable. I begin to feel that I am fighting the old war all over again, this time dressed up in a new disguise. The names of the enemies have changed, their addresses have shifted, but down deep, where the soul rot takes root and consumes healthy tissue, they remain the same.
    Terrorism is the target this time out. But was it ever any different? At its most basic, stripped of all the political and