Bolan speared the guy with a hard gaze. "You got it?" he yelled.
"Yes sir, it's all out. Do I hear gunshots?"
"Every damn nickel?"
"Yes sir, every damn nickel."
"What are you running, so far?"
"Just over a half-million, Mr. Vinton, but the confirmation count is just going into the..."
"Awright, kill it and get out of here!"
"Sir?"
"There's a rumble, can't you hear? Get your broads outta here, I don't want 'em caught in nothing like this!"
"You mean… just leave? Just leave it?"
"You can't take it with you can you, you jerk?" Bolan yelled. "Get those dames outta here!"
It was apparently the final straw for a business-methods freak already pushed beyond the strain-point. The guy spun about and walked stiffly to the door. "Get them out yourself," he called over his shoulder, and out he went.
Bolan yelled, "Leave them doors open! Out, girls, get the hell out!"
He was grabbing and shoving, and Max was lending a hand to a scene of confusion and pyramiding chaos.
Above the feminine hubbub, Bolan told Max, "Take 'em out, and make sure they get clear."
"Sure boss," said instant loyalty.
And then there was just Bolan and the inside guard. Bolan gave him a hard stare and said, "Well, are you going down with the bucks?"
The guy said, "No sir," and went out.
Bolan went over to the new money, obviously the stuff from the vault, and riffled through the stacks. There were packets of denominations ranging from fifties to thousands. He picked up a packet of the largest denomination and thrust it into his inside coat pocket. Next he found the fire station and disabled the automatic sprinklers.
And then he went to the door, bent down, produced an incendiary stick he'd been carrying in a leg strap, removed the cap, and tossed the firebomb onto the center table.
It spit and popped and began showering the place with white-hot chemicals, and Bolan got out of there.
The mob was so wild about hot money, he'd give them some. Skim that, he muttered.
He banged the door, ran the combination and commanded the hallway guard, "Nobody goes in!"
"No sir."
"Not Christ himself! The joint is sealed!"
"I got you, sir."
He went on through to the casino floor and repeated the command to the two guards there. The guys were nervous and obviously torn up. One of them asked him, "Did someone try a heist, Mr. Vinton?"
Bolan said, "Yeh, but don't you worry about the action out front. Just do your job here."
The guard unholstered his pistol and assured the boss that he would do just that.
Bolan went on around the corner and came out on the main floor. The last of the women were just then disappearing into the dining room.
Max Keno was returning, skirting warily around the scene of the shooting.
Two guys were laid out on the promenade, bleeding and not moving.
It was hard to tell from the angle of vision, but one of them looked like a Talifero.
Keno yelled, "Lookout boss! Joe is..."
A gun roared from somewhere in the tables and the little tagman took a dive.
Bolan did likewise, slapping leather in the process, and he came up against a gaming table with the Beretta up and ready.
A bunch of guys ran in from the lobby. Bolan yelled to them, "Out, get outta here!"
A gun roared again, a bullet splattered into the door moulding, and the guys dodged back to safety.
But Bolan spotted Joe Stanno on that round. He tired along the floor, beneath the tables, the Beretta phutting twice and cutting Stanno's legs from under him.
The monster man went down with a thud and a sigh.
And then the place was being invaded. People were dodging in from both doorways, hard people packing hardware and sprinting for cover wherever cover could be found.
Bolan had but one way to go, and that was toward Joe Stanno. He snaked along the floor beneath the tables where the big guy was lying on his side acd watching him come.
Stanno was sieved. He was bleeding from numerous punctures in the chest and one in the gut, a trickle of blood was oozing from the corner of his mouth, and his pants legs were turning red from Bolan's hits.
His gun was lying on the floor, under his nose. He raised his head off the floor and asked Bolan, "Hey, tough, which one did I get? Was it Pat or Mike?"
"I think you got them both, Joe," came the reply in Bolan's natural voice.
Joe die Monster smiled and coughed up blood and said, "I knew they wasn't so tough," and then he lay his head back down beneath the crap table and died.
A volley of fire hit the table at that precise moment, and Solan rolled on. From somewhere on his flank he heard Max Keno hissing, "Boss, what's going on?"
"Bets are off, Max," he called back. "You're on yourself."
Such a situation had apparently never arisen for the little tagman. After a lifetime of forever being "on" someone else, there was absolutely no mental concept of being "on himself."
He snaked and rolled to Bolan's outside flank and gasped, "Out the kitchen, boss, that's the best way."
A Taliferi was running down the stairway from the upstairs joint, another guy one step behind. Bolan heard him shouting, "That's Bolan! Don't let him get out!"
Bolan snapped a Parabellum toward the staircase and he saw the fabric of the Taliferi's suit pop and recoil, and the guy took a nose-dive down the steps. -
Someone yelled, "He hit the bossl"
Bolan had lost his purple lenses during the scramble, and now Max Keno was staring into his unshuttered eyes with the heady revelation of truth crackling between them. And obviously the truth had no bearing on the matter. The boss was tht boss, whatever else he might be. The little guy grinned and chirped, "Follow me, boss."
There was no immediate alternative, and Bolan's number were running out. He rolled and slid and crawled through the jungle of mahogany and green felt until it began to seem like an eternal trek — and then Max was grunting, "Go on, straight ahead, I'll cover you."
Bolan sprang toward a curtained doorway, no more than two table-lengths away. Guns roared and spat-angry little hornets of destruction in hot pursuit, and they were zipping the air all about him, thwacking into the wall beyond and plowing into tables to either side of his backtrack. Behind him he could hear Max's methodical response, the air suddenly cleared and the roar of weapons died off.
Also behind him a loud voice was proclaiming, "We are federal officers! All of you stop firing and throw down your weapons!"
And then Bolan was through the curtains and running along a short hallway and toward a swinging door to the kitchen.
The door swung open and Bolan skidded to an abrupt halt.
Harold Brognola stood there, blocking the way with a sawed-off shotgun raised and ready.
The sad-faced lawman hesitated for perhaps a heartbeat.
And, in that heartbeat, Bolan was aware of a small figure swinging in around him.
Time froze, and Bolan's thoughts raced on, stretching the moment into an infinity of ideas, and he knew that Max Keno, the career tagman, was acting out a subliminal reflex as deeply-rooted as Bolan's own rage for survival, that he was moving his own life into the breach between certain death and "the boss's" precious body — and little Max Keno died like the true tagman he'd always been.
He took the shotgun charge full in the chest, his pistol firing in reflex, and he was swept back by the blast and flung into the corner of the hallway.
The shotgun clattered to the floor and Brognola sank down with a Keno bullet in the thigh.
Their eyes met and locked momentarily. Bolan threw a regretful and silent farewell to the remains of little Max, and he patted Borgnola's shoulder and went on.