"Gosh, you always wake up and catch me staring at you," she said lightly.
Bolan blinked. "Have I been dreaming?" he asked weakly. "Or has this all happened before?"
His shoulder was freshly bandaged and he was aware of the sheets against bare skin; he was naked. "Yeah, it's happened before," he said, answering his own question.
Valentina leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips. "You passed out in the doorway," she told him. "Don't you remember that?"
"I just feel weak, weak, weak," he mumbled.
"Well, you should, and it serves you right," she said. She held up a newspaper which had been draped across her lap. "It says here that you killed twenty-three men last night, and seriously injured another fifty-one."
"It says that?"
"Uh- huh. Can't you see the headline?"
He focused his eyes on the bold black print atop the newspaper. "'Executioner rubs out Mafia,'" he read aloud, then closed his eyes and stretched an arm to grasp her hand. It felt warm, soft, and tiny-and Bolan's heart lurched. "God, Val, I thought I wouldn't make it," he murmured.
She lay down beside him, carefully arranging herself away from the wound, and placed her face against his. "I would have never forgiven you if you hadn't," she whispered.
"It's going to be okay now," he assured her.
"I know. The war's over, and you've won."
"Not the war, honey, just a battle. You have to understand that. The war is still on. All I've won is a battle."
She stiffened momentarily, then flowed back against him. "While you were sleeping, you kept groaning that there was no victory. What did you mean?"
"I don't know," he replied honestly.
"Well, don't you feel a sense of victory?"
Bolan cautiously positioned his weak arm about her and followed up with a tight clasp of the good one. Of course he felt a sense of victory-but not until this moment, not until right now. "A man fights for things-not against things," he said.
She drew back to gaze at him. He opened his eyes and returned the frank stare. "You're deep, you know," she told him. "You are very deep. Now just what did you mean by that?"
He smiled, ignoring the pain of his shoulder. "Freely translated," he replied, "it means, tender Val, that I love you nutty."
"That's s a victory?" she asked, the lights flaring deep in her eyes.
"It's the only victory a man can ever know," he assured her.
She moved away from him, got to her feet slipped off the simple housecoat, her only garment, drew back the sheet, and slid in alongside him, pressing herself in close conjunction. "As soon as you get your strength back," she told him, "I'll challenge you to demonstrate that victory."
"Hell, there's nothing wrong with my strength," he said, grinning. "My strength isn't in my shoulder, silly."
"I know where your strength is," she murmured. "The honeymoon wasn't that short. Anyway, it isn't even over. Is it?"
"Some things, like war and love, are never over," he said, folding her in closer.
"Which is this?" she asked tremulously. "This" he replied, "is victory in both." She sighed and lay her face in the hollow of his throat. "Victory is so sweet," she whispered.
EPILOGUE
The battle of Pittsfield had ended. Victory, for Mack Bolan, had been not an era but a miniscule point in time which had already receded into the fuzzy past, one that was absorbed and neutralized by the perilous present and which stood under the constant threat of being reversed by the uncertain future. Bolan had not killed an idea, nor a system; he had barely rippled the surface of the most powerful underworld organization in existence. Already, he knew, the full resources of that organization would be gearing up to flick away the gnat which was gnawing on its shinbone. There were no self-deceptions for Bolan; he knew that he was perhaps the most marked man in underworld history. He had, overnight, become an American legend; a plum to be picked by every ambitious law enforcer in the nation; sudden riches to be cashed in by every two-bit punk with a gun in the country; a debt to be settled by each member of the far-flung family of Mafia around the world.
Mack Bolan was marked for death; he realized that he was as condemned as any man who had ever sat on death row. His chief determination was to stretch that last mile to its highest yield, to fight the war to its last gasp, to "eat their bowels even as they are trying to digest me."
Bolan had taken steps to minimize his personal danger. He had changed the color of his hair, grown a moustache, and adopted horn-rimmed, clear-lens glasses. This cover, he hoped, would at least see him safely to the West Coast. A better cover awaited him there, in the talents of a former Army surgeon who owed his life to Mack Bolan-a surgeon whose battlefield experiences had given rise to his present specialty: cosmetic surgery. Bolan would find a new face on the West Coast. He left behind, in Pittsfield, an orphaned brother, a chunk of money, and a pretty girl to administer both. He left behind, also, an identity; one which perhaps he would never again be able to claim.
Bolan swung his newly acquired vehicle onto the west expressway of Pittsfield on the evening of September 12th, blending in with the rush-hour traffic, Val's tearful goodbye still influencing his emotions. Behind lay everything he had ever held dear. Ahead lay everything he had ever learned to fear. He cleared his mind of self-pity, letting go even of the image of tender Val, and scowled into the bright glow of the setting sun. There was nothing ahead but hell. He was prepared for hell. Somebody else, he avowed, had better get prepared for it, too. Mack Bolan's last mile would be a bloody one. The Executioner was going to live life to the very end.
-end-